


Die Hard (But Only If No Other Options Are Readily Available)

by JenTheSweetie



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-18 10:05:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4702037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenTheSweetie/pseuds/JenTheSweetie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Tony hadn’t written off the Avengers when he ended up on the Raft.  </i>
</p><p><i>What he absolutely </i>hadn’t<i> expected was for them to show up to break him out.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Die Hard (But Only If No Other Options Are Readily Available)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6146953) by [fukujang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fukujang/pseuds/fukujang)



> This takes place after Age of Ultron and is a WIP that I intend to finish within the next few weeks. As always, I appreciate all feedback! 
> 
> A massive thank you to Snapjack, who provided endless encouragement as I stepped out of my comfort zone and dithered for months, provided a fantastic title, and showed me how to catch fireflies.

Time didn’t pass normally on the Raft.  

There were meals three times a day in the mess hall, and an hour of physical activity in the gym every afternoon that Tony suspected was actually about keeping track of whose powers were acting up, and then there was a whole lot of... nothing.  The Raft wasn’t a state penitentiary or a federal prison, it was a secret supermax on a rock in the Atlantic Ocean, and while they nominally observed things like human rights, quite a few people made the argument that the Raft’s prisoners - supervillains and evil geniuses and mass murderers - weren’t human enough for those rights to apply.  

Anybody who wasn’t crazy _before_  they got to the Raft caught up pretty quickly.

“Lights out,” came a voice down the hall, and all at once the entire Raft went black.  It wasn’t darkness like Tony had ever experienced in Manhattan; it was thick and heavy, the kind of dark where it didn’t matter if your eyes were open or shut.  

Most of the prisoners went quiet at night.  The darkness choked them out, silenced their tortured screams and maniacal laughter and the sizzling and whirring and crackling of their powers.  Tony couldn’t hear anything but the waves splashing against the rocks.  He drifted into a dream of constructing a new Iron Man suit, crudely built out of anything he could find in his cell, worse even than the suit from Afghanistan, with just enough power to get him off the Raft but not enough to make it back to New York, so somewhere over the Atlantic it just went quiet and he fell, hard and fast into the black ocean -

There was a crash from the hallway.

Tony sat up, gasping for breath in the water, his hands fisted in the thin cotton blanket, sweat dripping down his back.  There was another crash, and then the _ting_  of metal bouncing off metal.  

Blind in the thick darkness, Tony stood up and fumbled toward the door.  It wasn’t unusual for there to be trouble at night, but usually by now there were guards running down the hall, yelling for quiet or firing warning shots into the ceiling.  But tonight there was nothing.  The entire Raft was holding its breath.  

Tony leaned against the steel door, straining to hear.  There was one set of heavy footsteps coming slowly down the hall.  

There was the sound of a key card sliding, and Tony threw himself backwards, hands in the air, as the door swung open.

“Tony?”

Tony blinked in the harsh, unexpected light.  

Steve lowered his shield.  “Come on.  We’re getting you out of here.”

-

Tony hadn’t written off the Avengers.  He’d expected some of them to testify in his favor; they would remind the court of everything he’d done over the past five years to make the world a safer place, talk about the Battle of New York, point out that Ultron had been a mistake and argue (wrongly) that Tony wasn’t dangerous.  He’d expected that they, more than anyone, would understand that the weight of the world had been on his shoulders, that he’d been trying to do something _good_  and, because he was Tony Stark, he’d fucked it all up.  He didn’t necessarily _want_  any of that, but he’d expected it.

What he absolutely _hadn’t_ expected was for one of them to show up on the Raft to break him out.  

“Let’s go,” Steve said, waving him forward.

Numbly, Tony followed Steve out of the cell and down the hallway.  A patrol guard lay on the ground, his eyes red and blank.

“Wanda?” Tony whispered.  

Steve held out a hand to stop him before they rounded a corner, then waved him forward after he’d checked that it was clear.  “She’s in the guard booth now, making sure that they’re not seeing any of this.”

“Why are you - ”

“Natasha, I have him,” Steve said into his comm, because apparently being in prison for creating a sentient WMD didn’t stop your team from using your tech.  “All clear in the tower?  Wanda, clear in the guard booth?  Okay.  We’re coming up to level 3.”

“What’s on level 3?” Tony said.

“Sam, anybody on their way?” Steve said, still ignoring him.  “Okay, good.  Clint, we should be there in 90 seconds.”

“Gang’s all here,” Tony said, following Steve up a flight of metal stairs, his too-big prison slippers slowing him down.  “Not that I don’t appreciate this whole breaking me out of prison thing, but would you mind explaining to me - ”

“Later,” Steve said shortly, pausing at the top of the steps.  “Are you ready to run?”

“Sure,” Tony said.  “Just tell me whe - ”

An alarm wailed.

“ _Now_ ,” Steve said.  He shoved the door open and took off sprinting.  

“Fuck,” Tony said, and ran after him.

He was blasted immediately with biting cold air and pinpricks of icy rain, and he took a deep breath, sucking in the salt air for the first time in weeks.  This was the upper deck, just a level away from the landing strip where all prisoners arrived.  They were hundreds of feet above the ocean, but he could hear it crashing against the rocks, and he’d barely adjusted to the moonlight when he was blinded by the spotlight from the tower.

Without warning, the air was full of bullets, and Steve grabbed Tony’s arm and pulled him down, holding his shield up in front of both of them.  

“Been a while since I’ve been shot at without a suit on,” Tony yelled over the dinging of bullets against vibranium.  

“Sam, kill the light,” Steve said into his comm.  “Nat, can you buy us another thirty seconds?  I don’t want Clint to de-cloak until the last second.”

“Do you happen to have a spare comm?” Tony said.  “It’s actually really annoying not being able to hear what’s going on.”

The lights went out, and the hail of bullets faltered.  “We have to get across the open deck to get to the landing strip,” Steve said.  “On my mark.  Ready… go!”

They stood up, and Tony heard a bullet whistle past his ear.  Steve held his shield out in front of them, and bullets ricocheted off of it.  They careened around a corner and up a flight of steps, and then Tony could see the airstrip where he’d touched down weeks ago.  There was the tell-tale shimmer, visible only to someone who’d designed it, of a cloaked Quinjet.

There were also a dozen guards running across the airstrip.  They didn’t need the spotlight from here, they were close enough to raise their guns and fire.  Steve kept running straight ahead, and the guards faltered; they clearly hadn’t expected to see Captain America barreling toward them.

“Cap!” Tony yelled over the wind.  “Look out, they - ”

A blast of red light nearly blinded him, and half the guards fell to their knees.  From the base of the tower, Wanda shot a second blast of light at the guards who still stood, and they dropped their guns and joined their comrades on the ground.  Tony could hear the thunder of more guards behind them, and he ran flat-out, his lungs burning, wishing like hell that he had a repulsor on him, his boots, _anything_  -

“Clint, now!” Steve yelled, and with a ripple, the Quinjet de-cloaked right in front of them.  Steve and Tony ran up the ramp, and Natasha darted out of the guardhouse and jumped into the jet just before the ramp shut.  

“What about Wanda?” Tony yelled, running to the front window.

“I have Ms. Maximoff,” came a familiarly calm voice over the speaker, and as Tony watched, Vision swooped down, scooped Wanda up in his arms, and flew straight up, away from the approaching phalanx of Raft guards.  

The Quinjet lifted off, the repulsors roaring as they gained altitude and left the Raft shrinking away below.  Clint took them into a sharp roll, and Tony held the grab bar to avoid losing his balance.  There were a few moments of tense silence, as they all listened for the _ping_  of the Quinjet telling them that there was a missile in pursuit, but the comm was silent, and Tony let out a deep breath.

“Uh,” he said.  “I guess this is the part where I say thank you?”  


“Don’t mention it.”  Clint looked over his shoulder and grinned.  “Good to see you, man.  Glad you didn’t die in there.”

“Me too,” Tony said, grinning back.  “Now can somebody explain what led to this little prison break?”

“We decided it was time for you to leave the Raft,” Natasha said.  “The World Security Council disagreed.”

“So you went rogue?”  Tony raised his eyebrows.  “Not that I don’t appreciate it, because I do, really, you wouldn’t believe the conditions in there, I haven’t had decent Chinese food in months - but isn’t this kind of out of character?  I mean, S.H.I.E.L.D. was responsible for putting most of those guys on the Raft in the first place, I didn’t think they’d want anyone to know that a breakout might be a po - ”

“This wasn’t S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Steve said.  “This was us.  Just us.”    
  
“Well, and Fury,” Clint said.  “Fury’s on alibis for the rest of us.  If anybody can spin up an alibi, it’s that guy.  One time I was on TV in Russia, long story, and he convinced the government that I’d been scuba diving in Australia.  I even got a spray tan.”  
  
“Rhodey’s in too,” Natasha added.  “Half the Air Force is scrambling toward a possible bomb on an airplane over Philadelphia.  It’ll all be a big miscommunication by the morning.”

“You guys faked a terrorist attack just for me?  I’m flattered,” Tony said.  “Again, super appreciative, but Jesus Christ, it’s not like I was about to _die_  in there - ”

Steve froze.

“ - or something,” Tony trailed off.  He looked around at Clint, who was staring straight out the windshield, to Natasha, who was examining her pistol, to Steve, whose jaw was set so hard that Tony was afraid he might crack a tooth.  “Okay, maybe I’m misreading the room, but I’m kind of getting the feeling there’s something you guys aren’t telling me.  Should I guess?  Okay, I’ll guess.  You’re out of money and you need me to dip into my secret offshore accounts.  Not that I have secret offshore accounts, who said anything about secret offshore accounts - okay, it’s not money, no, you need tech, you need something I was working on back before I went all supervillain.  I’m not getting a lot from you guys right now, should we do charades?  Okay, okay, how many words - ”

“They were going to _execute_  you,” Steve said, slamming his hand against the center console so hard that it cracked.  “We broke you out because they were going to put a bullet in your head tomorrow morning.”

Tony swallowed the sick feeling in his stomach.  “Gotta say, Cap, I’m a little surprised you were so bothered by that.”

“I want you brought to justice,” Steve said.  “Murder isn’t justice.”

“And breaking me out of prison is?”

“Guys, let’s cool it, okay?” Clint said from the pilot’s seat.  “Tony, nobody here wants you dead.  I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know any of that crap, but no matter what, you should get a trial.  Somebody leaked that you weren’t gonna get one, so we got you out.”  
  
“So what’s the plan?” Tony said, crossing his arms.  “I go on the run?  I’m not sure I’m packed to be a fugitive.”

“Rhodey is going in front of Congress next week to try to get your case taken away from the WSC and back to the federal government,” Natasha said.  “Until then, we keep you hidden.”

“Where?”  
  
“We’re going to a S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse in France,” Clint said.  “We’ll drop you two there, and then - ”

“Two?” Tony said.  “Who’s coming with - ”  He looked at Steve.  “Oh, of course.  Mr. Eighth Amendment over here is my new warden.”

“Tony,” Clint said.  

“No, I get it,” Tony said.  “I might not belong on death row, but I’m still a danger to society, I can’t be trusted - ”

“No, you can’t,” Steve said.  “You threw out your own safeguards and built a machine that was capable of destroying the world, and then you hosted a _party_.  Do you really expect anyone to trust you?”    
  
“No, I don’t,” he said, meeting Steve’s cold gaze.  “I don’t expect anyone to trust me.  I don’t even trust myself.”

There was a heavy silence in the jet.  Tony could hear the buzz of the dead comm line, the quiet whir of the repulsors.  The anger drained out of him in a rush; all the weight of his months on the Raft took its place, knocking the breath out of his chest.  He dropped into the nearest seat and buckled up.  It was going to be a long ride.

-

“Well, the view’s better than from my cell, at least,” Tony said.

Northern France was spread out in front of him, a golden-green patchwork of fields and villages, their sodium lights winking in the distance.  The safehouse was small and nondescript, far enough from the road that you could see anybody coming long before they could tell if you were watching, and it backed up on a thick clump of trees.  In the distance, dawn was nudging at the horizon.  

Clint handed him a duffel bag.  “What, you don’t like the ocean?”

“I don’t mind the ocean,” Tony said, following Clint off the jet.  “It’s just kind of one-note, after a few months.”

“Better than this prison I was in once in Karachi.”  Clint pulled a lockpick out of his backpack and jimmied it into the rusty old lock on the front door of the house.  “It had a view directly into some gross old guy’s house, and he wouldn’t stop walking around naked, worst three days of my life even without the waterboarding.  Gotcha,” he said as the lock clicked.  He shouldered the door open, and a cloud of dust billowed out.

“Steve and I are going to walk the perimeter of the property and check out the village a few miles away,” Natasha said, dropping a crate that looked suspiciously like it might hold old Stark weaponry onto the creaky wood floor.  “We don’t want any surprises, and nobody’s used this place in almost fifteen years.”

“You don’t say,” Tony said, running a finger along a table next to the door and cringing as it came away grimy.

“Maybe you could clean up a little?” Natasha suggested, clearly suppressing a grin.

“Emphasis on the maybe,” Clint said.  “Bring back some breakfast, yeah?”

“Will do,” Natasha said.  “We’ll be back soon, we have to be at the Eiffel Tower by noon.”

“How romantic,” Clint said, fluttering his eyelashes at Natasha.  She rolled her eyes and shut the door behind her.  

“So here’s a question,” Tony said, pulling a dustcover off what turned out to be an old but very comfortable-looking chair.  “I know firsthand Wanda can do some amazing stuff with those freaky hands of hers, but several supervillains and a couple dozen guards saw Captain America on the Raft a few hours ago.  Everyone’s going to know he’s the one who broke me out.”

“Exactly,” Clint said.  “He’s got favors for days, man.  The rest of us they’ll throw in the Raft in the cell next to yours without a second glance, but not him.  You know his name, right?  If Steve’s vouching for you, they’re gonna have a hard time skipping your trial.”  

“He doesn’t actually want me out, though,” Tony said.  “He’s just got a hard on for the Constitution.”

“It’s not that simple,” Clint said, running a rag under the faucet and starting to wipe down the countertops.  “Look, I know you’re mad that he, you know - ”

“That he went to the World Security Council and turned over my records on the Ultron project?” Tony said.  “That he provided the information got me thrown in the Raft?  Look, I’m not saying I didn’t fuck up.  I’m not saying I didn’t even deserve to be there, because I did.  I’m no better than the rest of the guys in there.”  
  
“Tony - ”

“No, seriously,” Tony interrupted.  “I’ve had a long time to think - not a whole lot else to do in supermax, turns out, they don’t even have HBO, god, I have missed _so_  much Game of Thrones - and I’m not arguing I shouldn’t be there.  I should.  It’s that it was - it’s that it was _Steve_.  Of all the people who have turned on me in my life - and that’s a lot, for the record - this is the one I _really_  didn’t see coming.  I thought he was my teammate, I thought he was my _friend_. ”

“He is your friend,” Clint said, throwing the rag on the counter and whirling on Tony.  “Think about it, man.  He wanted SHIELD to do an investigation, maybe set up some kinda oversight committee in your lab.  He never thought they’d put you in the _Raft_ , Tony, Jesus.  You think he woulda gone to the WSC if he’d known that?”  

Tony dragged a cover off the sofa and threw it on the ground with a little more force than necessary.  “Honestly?  I don’t know anything about him anymore.  I thought I did, but - yeah, no, I don’t.”  

Clint sighed.  He picked up his rag and ran it under the water, staring out the kitchen window at the lightening French countryside.  “All right, man.  I get it.  I do.  Just - look.  Don’t be too hard on him, okay?  Oh, gross gross gross, there’s a huge spider over here, ugh, can you come deal with this?”

Tony raised his eyebrows.  “Are you fucking kidding me?”  
  
“Laura does the spiders at our house,” Clint said.

“If I kill the spider, you have to start cleaning the bathroom,” Tony said, taking the rag from Clint’s hands.  “That’s the deal!”

“I should have left you in prison,” Clint muttered.

-

Shortly after sunrise, Clint and Natasha rode away on the sleek black motorcycle they’d stowed in the back of the jet.  The safehouse was bright in the morning light, and Tony opened the creaky windows to let the cool air into the tiny bedroom that looked out over the weed-filled garden and watched the light filter in through the clump of trees behind the cottage.  He hadn’t heard the sound of birds in months.   

He sat down on the freshly made bed; the mattress was lumpy and the sheets weren’t exactly egyptian cotton, but compared to his cot on the Raft it felt like a marshmallow.  He didn’t even realize he’d closed his eyes until he woke up several hours later in the hazy afternoon light.  He stretched as he got out of bed, feeling his vertebrae crack satisfyingly, and padded toward the kitchen.  Steve was standing at the stove, pushing eggs around a pan.  

“Sleep well?”

Tony leaned against the doorframe.  “Better than last night.  Or the night before.  Whenever it was I last slept.  Prison lag.  Are you cooking?  I didn’t know you could cook.”

“I lived alone for a long time before the war.  Well, with Bucky.  Bucky sure couldn’t cook, though.  He’d have eaten a can of beans on a piece of toast every night if I hadn’t been there.  You want some?”

“Sure,” Tony said.  “So, what’s the plan?  The WSC knows I’m gone, and by now they know you’re with me.  They’re going to be looking for us.”  
  
“Which is why we’re staying here,” Steve said.  “This place requires a level 8 security clearance.  We’re not sure there’s anybody left who knows about it besides Nick Fury.”

“And we trust Nick Fury?”

“If Nick wanted you dead, he’d kill you himself,” Steve said.  “We have bigger problems.  This place is out of the way, but they’ll be using face-tracking technology, satellites, you name it.  Hopefully, things will go well for Rhodey next week, but until then - ”

“Until then, this is my new prison,” Tony said.  “Got it.”  

Steve scooped the eggs out of the pan and slid them onto a plate, then pulled two forks out of the drawer and rinsed them off.  “It’s a little dusty, but it’s nicer than the place I stayed last time I was in France.”  
  
“Wasn’t that during World War II?”

“Well, yeah,” Steve said.  He put the plate down, and Tony sat down across from him at the cramped table.  

“It’s not the Ritz, that’s for sure.”  Tony shoveled half an egg into his mouth.  “But I’m not complaining.”  
  
“Give it a few days, I’m sure you’ll be ready to complain soon,” Steve said.

Tony snorted.  “Here we go.  Am I not being grateful enough for you, Steve?  Should I get down on my knees and grovel at Captain America’s feet?  I don’t know what you want from me.  If you don’t think I should’ve gotten out of there, you should have left me.”

“This is the 21st century,” Steve said, pulling the plate toward him and knocking Tony’s fork away.  “We don’t execute people without a trial.”

“But if I get a trial, you’ll be all for it.”

The temperature in the room dropped from chilly to below freezing.  “No.  I won’t.”  Steve shook his head.  “How can you think I want you dead, Tony?  I broke you out of prison.  I’m doing everything I can to keep you alive.”

“And that’s what I don’t understand,” Tony said.  “ _You’re_  what I don’t understand.  Why are you going through all this effort to get me out when you were the one who put me there in the first place?”

“Because you’re my responsibility,” Steve said.

Tony raised his eyebrows.  “I’m really, really not.”  

“The Avengers are my team,” Steve said.  “I brought us back together after SHIELD fell, and I’m responsible for everything that happened because of that.”

Tony crossed his arms over his chest.  “I see what you’re saying, Cap, but there’s one little flaw in your logic.  This was _my_  fault.  I made Ultron, and Ultron decided to kill people, and I wasn’t smart enough to stop him until he’d already hurt a lot of people.  And you know what the worst part is?”  


Steve stared at him.

“The worst part is that I thought I could _buy_  my way out of it.  I thought cleaning up Sokovia would make it better.  I though helping the Avengers set up the new base would scrub it all away.  But you know what?  Nothing ever will.  I’ve been getting away with my mistakes for my whole life, because of my money and my name and my suits, and it all finally caught up with me.  So you’re gonna have to get over thinking I’m your responsibility, and you’re gonna have to get over thinking you can save me, because when it comes down to it, I deserve whatever the hell I get.  And nothing can change that.”  Tony pushed himself back from the table.  “I’m gonna get some air.”

“Tony - ”

“What?” Tony shouted, whirling around. 

“Don’t go too far.  The perimeter of the property is alarmed.”

Tony snorted.  “Right.”  He pushed the door open and squinted in the fading afternoon light, stared at the sprawling countryside and the thicket of trees beside the house.  The rolling hills pressed in on him from every side, and he was hundreds of miles from the shore but he could still hear the waves beating against the rocks, because this was a beautiful prison, sure, but it was a prison all the same.

-

Tony spent most of the next day sleeping, and the rest of it brushing off Steve’s attempts to make conversation.  On the third morning Steve left a British newspaper lying on the sofa, so Tony spent the morning catching up on the news of his own escape. 

“There’ve been sightings of me in, let’s see, Rio, Stockholm, Abu Dhabi - man, I’m all over the place,” Tony said from the couch as Steve walked in with an armful of groceries late in the morning.  “But apparently not everybody’s convinced we’re hiding out together, because Captain America has been seen in Kyoto, Marrakech, and where was the last one - oh, right, Wichita, Kansas.”  He grinned up at Steve.  “Been to Kansas lately, Steve?”  
  
“Not since 1942,” Steve said, stashing a bottle of milk in the fridge.  “Fury’s been hard at work.  You done ignoring me?”

“I was getting bored,” Tony said, turning to financial news.  “Jesus Christ, SI is up 20% since my escape.  Just proves all my investors are idiots.”

“Ms. Potts should be happy.  I imagine they brought her in for questioning after we got you out, but she didn’t know anything, so they’ll definitely have let her go by now.”

“Good,” Tony said.  “Can’t see how anybody could think she’d bother to break me out of prison when she dumped me even _before_  I became a mass murderer.  Did you get any more of that cheese?  The good one?”

“I got _some_  cheese.  I don’t know which one was the good one,” Steve said.  “I got a phone, too.  It’s a burner, but - ”

“But I can use it to hack into Stark Industry’s satellite systems and send a message to Rhodey,” Tony said, jumping off the couch.  “I’ll have us on the internet in five minutes.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Steve said uncertainly.  “Won’t they be tracking that?  We shut down all the Quinjet’s systems so it wouldn’t be picked up by anybody looking for it.”

“The Quinjet is huge,” Tony said.  “Its systems are massive and completely unique, and they’ll be all over the satellites looking for it.  But a burner phone, even one piggybacking onto a Stark satellite, is just a blip.  You think I don’t know how to cover my trail when I break into my own tech?”

Steve shrugged.  “Just be careful, okay?”

“Phillips head screwdriver - huh?  Yeah, of course,” Tony muttered, pushing the front door open and jogging over to the shimmer that was the jet.  He felt around for a few seconds to find the hatch that opened the front window, then jumped in, shaking his head as it blinked into existence around him.  

“Toolbox, toolbox.  If I were Natasha, where would I hide a toolbox…”  He opened several drawers to find most of the Quinjet’s storage areas stocked with weapons, ammunition, spare comms, replacement parts in case they were hit in midair, a few bobby pins that Tony figured belonged to either Nat or Thor, and finally a whole drawer of neatly arranged tools, right in the back.  He just had to push past whatever was in the way in this giant case, jeez, it had to be six and a half feet tall, what _was_  - 

Tony froze.  He reached with shaking hands to the clasps at knee level and shoulder level, then slowly opened the case to see - his own reflection in red chrome, staring back at him.

It was Iron Man.

It was an Iron Man suit, _here_.  He hadn’t worked on a suit in months, since the day before they took him to the Raft.  He hadn’t fought in one since Ultron.    

He could put it on right now.  He could put it on and fly away, fly until he ran out of power, fight off anybody who tracked him down, disappear until nobody could find him, until Steve and Natasha and Clint and Rhodey and _everybody_  forgot all about him.  

He could put it on - 

“Tony.”

Tony sighed as Steve dropped into the cockpit through the open hatch.  “Just in time.  I was about to go for a joyride.”

“Tony - ”

“Why didn’t you tell me you had it?” Tony said, turning to him.  “Worried I’d take off?”  
  
“Worried you’d do something stupid,” Steve said.  “If the Quinjet is a giant flashing light on the WSC’s radar, what do you think the suit would be?”

“So why did you even _bring_  it?  Just to taunt me with it?  Remind me of what I used to be, remind me of everything I could have been if I hadn’t built a murderbot that destroyed an entire _city_  - ”

“We brought it so that you could defend yourself,” Steve said.  “So that you could escape if something happened to the rest of us.”

“If something happened to - and how was I supposed to use it if I didn’t even know it was here?  Do you know what would happen if this fell into the wrong hands, Cap?  This armor is the most powerful thing I’ve ever - okay, well, the _second_  most powerful thing I’ve ever built, and you just left it out here in the jet?”

“Were you thinking about leaving in it?” Steve said.

“Of course I was.”

“Then I made the right call.  If you took off in that thing right now, somebody would see you.  They’d see you, and they’d shoot you down, and if that didn’t kill you, it wouldn’t be long until they found you on the ground and finished the job.  Do you know what that would do to the team?  To me?”

“Yeah, it would make your life a lot easier,” Tony snapped.  “You could go back to New York and forget you ever even _knew_  - ”

“Shut up.”

Tony slammed the Iron Man case shut.  “No, I think I’ll keep yelling, actually - ”

“No, shut _up_!” Steve said.  “There’s somebody outside the jet.”

Tony shut up.  

“Do you hear them?” Steve said quietly.

Tony listened.  “No.”

Steve waved him forward, and they both crept to the open hatch at the front of the jet.  Tony strained to hear anything, but the countryside was silent; he couldn’t even hear any cars in the distance.

“What was it?” he whispered.

“Footsteps.  Moving toward the house,” Steve said.  He winced.  “My shield’s right by the door.”

Tony opened one of the drawers he’d opened earlier and produced two Glocks.  “Courtesy of the Black Widow.”

Steve took one, and they both slowly climbed down from the Quinet.  The sun was high in the sky, and Tony thought distantly that it wasn’t exactly the best time of day for a sneak attack.  

“I’ll put on the suit,” he said when they were halfway around the cloaked jet, just yards from the front door.  

“No,” Steve said.  “It might be nothing, just somebody who saw the lights on and wondered who was home.  Cover me.”

He darted forward, pressing himself against the wall next to the front door with his gun held aloft, and Tony cursed under his breath and followed him.  

“Do you hear… music?” Steve whispered.

Tony could hear it now too.  Jazz, filtering through the open window from the staticky old radio in the living room.   “What the hell?” he said as Steve reached for the door handle.  “Wait - ”

Steve pulled the door open and pointed his gun into the living room.

Natasha waved from the couch.  “Hey, guys.”

Steve lowered the gun.

Tony slumped.  “Fuck you, Romanov.  We could have shot you.”

“But you didn’t,” Natasha said.  She lifted up an empty glass. “Wine?”

“You should have said it was you when you heard us coming for the door,” Steve said, setting the glock down on the kitchen table.  

The toilet flushed, and Clint opened the door to the bathroom.  “We heard you guys yelling when we pulled in, figured we’d let you wrap it up.  Anyway, I’ve had to piss since Paris, but _somebody_  wouldn’t pull the motorcycle over.” 

“Too likely we were being followed, golubushka.”  Natasha handed a glass of wine to Clint and turned to Steve.  “We had a visit from some friends last night.”

“Friends?” Steve said.

“Oh, you know.  CIA, FBI, Interpol,” Clint said airily, downing half the glass of wine.  

“Did they interrogate you?”

Clint snorted.  “They tried.  So you two haven’t killed each other yet?”  He held his glass out for a refill, and Natasha smacked his hand away, pouring another and holding it out to Steve, who shook his head.  

“Miraculously, no,” Tony said.  “Thanks for telling me you brought a suit along, though, super helpful to know.”

Clint rolled his eyes.  “Don’t be such a drama queen.  He was gonna tell you eventually.  It’s not like you needed it for anything, anyway.”

“Did something else happen that necessitated an in-person visit?” Steve said, before Tony could open his mouth to keep arguing. 

“Kind of,” Clint said.  

Natasha leaned back in her seat and took a sip of wine.  “Bruce called me.”

“ _What_?” Tony said.  “Where is he?”

“He didn’t say.  He doesn’t want us to come after him, he just wanted to check in,” Natasha said.

“He figured we were in on your breakout and he wanted to make sure Nat was okay,” Clint translated.  

Natasha turned to Tony  “He said he’ll come out of hiding and turn himself in.  He said he’d take responsibility for Ultron if they let you go.”

“No,” Tony said.  “He can’t do that.  They can’t put the Hulk in prison, they can’t kill him - he’ll kill _them_.”

“Exactly,” Natasha said.  “We told him they won’t do a trade, they’ll just try to take him in too, and that - ”

“And that would be a massacre,” Steve said.  “Did you get any idea of where he is?”

“We tried tracing the signal, but he’d blocked most of our tracers,” Clint said. 

“He said that he’s somewhere where he doesn’t think anyone will ever think to look for him.”  Natasha stared down at her glass.  “And I think I know where that might be.”

“Where?”

“He told me once about a village on an island off the coast of Bangladesh,” she said.  “The people there had been workers at a nuclear plant near Calcutta, and some of them had - deformities.  From the radiation.  When he was traveling after what happened in Harlem, he spent a month there, trying to treat their kids.  He’d only left a few weeks before S.H.I.E.L.D. tracked him down before the Battle of New York.  He said once that he felt safe there because - because it was a place nobody wanted to remember.  It was a place for people that everybody wanted to forget.”

Tony set down his glass.  “I should go there.”

“Tony,” Steve said, “maybe once all of this is resolved, we’ll go looking him, but for now we need to focus on - ”

“No, I mean, _I_  should go there too,” Tony said.  “Permanently.”  
  
“What, like, exile yourself?” Clint said.  “Come on, man.  You know they probably don’t have good wi-fi, right?  You wouldn’t last a week.”

“I’m serious,” Tony said.  “I’ll go there and, I don’t know, build things for kids, work on Bruce’s medical equipment, do something where I can’t hurt anybody anymore.”

“No,” Steve said flatly.

“I’m sorry, since when is it _your_  decision where I spend the rest of my life?” Tony said, turning to Steve so fast that some of the wine sloshed out of his glass.

“Since I broke you out of prison,” Steve said.  “You’re not going there.  Rhodey goes in front of Congress in four days.”

“And have you considered what we do if Congress tells him to fuck off?” Tony said.  “I kinda have a feeling you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in this shack, in France, with _me_.”

“If it meant keeping you alive?” Steve said.  “I’d do much worse.”

There was a long silence while Tony tried not to think too hard about _that_ , because ugh.  Feelings.  

“We don’t have to decide anything now,” Natasha said finally.  “We don’t even know for sure where he is.”

“Right,” Tony said.  “Sure.”  

Clint let out a deep breath.  “You guys got enough food for dinner for four?” 

-

“You’re telling the story wrong,” Natasha said, ripping another piece of bread off the last baguette.

“I’m telling it _wrong_?” Clint said.  “I’m telling it how it _happened,_  Nat, and how it happened is that I was getting the grand tour, you know, of the new facilities, right, and it’s like broad fuckin’ daylight, two in the afternoon, and we walk into the weight room and - ”

“But you skipped a part,” Natasha interrupted.  “With the cameras.”  
  
“Oh, right,” Clint said.  “Okay, so I’m getting the tour, and this security guard comes up and says, Agent Romanov, he says, there’s something wrong with the cameras in the weight room.  They’re all getting this red stuff all over them, like some kinda fog or something.”

“It was more of a haze,” Natasha said.  

“Okay, a haze, fine.  So we’re like, okay, we’ll check it out, right?  And so we go in, and there’s nothing - no red fog, or haze or whatever, it’s just empty.  Or so we thought.”

Tony leaned forward.  “What was going on?”

“So we turn the corner, right?  And right next to the big dumbells, the ones Cap uses, right up against the mirror, it’s Wanda and Vision just _going at it_.”

Tony’s jaw dropped.  “You’re kidding me.”

“I wish,” Natasha said.  

“They’re just making out like you would not _believe_ , like they’d never done it before, which I guess Vision probably hadn’t,” Clint conceded.  “And I mean, you know me and Nat, we move pretty quietly, so we just stand there watching for a minute, and then Nat clears her throat and you’d think they’d been _tased_  or something.”  He threw his head back and laughed.  “Turns out Wanda was fogging up the cameras by accident.”

“So are they, like, _dating_  now?” Tony said.  “Oh my god, does this mean Vision is getting more action than _I_  am?”

“And so the student becomes the master,” Clint said.  

“I’m proud of him,” Tony said.  “Wow.  Is this what it feels like to be a dad whose kid is dating somebody super hot?”  
  
“I don’t think so,” Steve said.  He glanced at his watch.  “Shoot.  You guys, it’s almost three in the morning.”

“We have to wake up in less than three hours if we want to get back to Paris in time for our flight,” Natasha said, turning to Clint.  “And we’re flying commercial, so you can’t just walk up thirty seconds before take off like you usually do.”

“Ugh, commercial,” Clint muttered.  “What’s the point of being an Avenger these days?”

“You guys should take the bedroom and catch a few hours sleep,” Tony said.  “If you don’t mind sharing a bed, that is.”

“I’ve shared with worse,” Natasha said.  “Steve’s a blanket hog.”  


“I don’t _hog_  blankets,” Steve said, grinning and leaning back in his chair.  “Most blankets just aren’t big enough.”

Clint rolled his eyes and threw a pillow at Steve’s head.  “Poor me, I’m Captain America and I’m too muscular and patriotic to fit under a normal man’s blanket.” 

When Clint stopped teasing Steve long enough for Natasha to force him into the bedroom and Steve settled in at the kitchen table with the newspaper Natasha had brought for him from Paris, Tony curled up under the ratty throw blanket and listened to the sounds of the house breathing around him: Clint snoring gently in the bedroom, Steve rustling the paper, the pipes creaking.  For a few hours, it had been almost like they were back at the Tower, drinking and shit-talking after a raid.  It had been almost like the past six months - the sceptre, and Ultron, and Pietro, and the Raft - had never happened.

Almost.

Tony didn’t know when he fell asleep, but when he woke up everything was quiet.  Through the window, the stars were fading and the sun was rising over the trees; the world seemed to be holding its breath.  Clint’s quiver and Natasha’s boots were still by the door, but the light was off in the kitchen, and Steve was no where to be found.  

Tony padded through the cottage to the front porch and pushed the door open.  Steve was standing in the clearing, not far from the Quinjet, staring out at the countryside toward the road.  Tony watched as he lifted his hand to his mouth and inhaled.

“Are you _smoking_?” he said as he took a step forward, and Steve looked around at him, the end of the cigarette glowing in the pre-dawn light.

“Seems like it,” Steve said.  

“Those things will kill you.”

“Somehow I doubt it,” Steve said.  He lifted it again and breathed in.  “Lucky Strikes.  The - the Commandos smoked these a lot.  They don’t sell them back home anymore, but I saw ‘em in the grocery store here, and I just - I like the smell.”   

Tony didn’t know what to say to that.  “You sleep at all?”

“Nah.  Maybe after Natasha and Clint leave.  I wanted to stay up and make sure nobody followed them here.”

“Right.  Look, about last night - I’m not gonna take off in the suit.”

Steve raised an eyebrow but didn’t take his eyes off the road.

“I mean, I thought about it, obviously.  But - and you know how much it pains me to say this - you’re right.  I’d get killed, and you guys would have done all of this - _you_  would have done all of this - for nothing.”  Tony stuck his hands in his pockets.  “I guess what I’m saying is, I’m gonna do my best to be not so much of an idiot.  And also, you know - thanks.  When all of this is over, I owe you a drink.”

Steve snorted.  “A drink, huh.”  


“Maybe that stuff from Asgard?”

“It tastes like rubbing alcohol.”

“But it works,” Tony said, grinning.  “I’ll call Thor, get you a whole barrel of - Cap?”

“Yeah?”

Tony squinted toward the hazy horizon.  “What’s that?”

There was something is the distance: something small and getting bigger, something like a bird, or a frisbee, or a - 

“Missile,” Steve said.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The wonderful [evenloversdrown](http://archiveofourown.org/users/evenloversdrown/pseuds/evenloversdrown) drew an incredibly lovely snapshot of the scene where Tony discovers the suit in the Quinjet, and she's given me permission to share it with all of you. You can see it and give it some love [here.](http://hundredthousands.tumblr.com/post/133172786267/illustration-for-die-hard-but-only-if-no-other)


	2. Chapter 2

There's nothing in the world quite like watching a missile barreling toward you.

The world slowed as the missile came into view, faster and closer and bigger, and Tony stepped automatically toward the suit, stowed away in the Quinjet, even though he knew it was too far to reach, too far to get to in time to fly them all away.

Steve grabbed him around the waist and threw him to the ground just as the missile whistled over their heads and exploded in the clearing just next to the Quinjet.  The explosion rang in Tony’s ears as dirt and shrapnel scattered in the wake of the explosion, and then Steve was hauling him to his feet and dragging him toward the house.

“Natasha!” Steve yelled, slamming into the cottage and grabbing his shield.  “Clint!”

“The Quinjet,” Tony said as Clint and Natasha burst out of the bedroom, already arming themselves.  “They must have targeted the Quinjet - ”

“How did they fucking _find_  it?” Clint snapped, pushing the curtains aside to look out the window.  “Guys, we’ve got a jet and two choppers on approach.” 

“They won’t miss next time,” Natasha said, strapping on her Widow’s bites.  “We need to get out of here.”

“I’ll take the jet,” Tony said.

“But if they’re targeting - ”

“If I have to bail out, I’ll have the suit,” Tony said.  “They’re looking for me, anyway.  If you’re in the jet, they’ll just kill you and keep coming after me.”

“He’s right,” Steve said.  “You two get on the motorcycle and try to split their attention.”

“Cap - ”

“That’s an order,” Steve said.  “We’ll try to contact you when we’re clear.”

Clint clapped Tony on the back and grabbed his helmet off the table.  “Get out of here.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Tony said, following him out the door.

As Natasha and Clint ran for the motorcycle, a chopper strafed the driveway, and Tony knew the jet was circling around to make another pass.  Steve and Tony bolted to the Quinjet, and Steve pulled open the hatch and jumped inside.

“Get in the suit,” he said, sitting down at the plane’s controls.  

“Way ahead of you,” Tony said, pulling open the case holding the armor and watching the eyes light up in response to his voice.  Despite the admittedly dire and potentially deadly situation, he grinned as the faceplate snapped shut over his eyes.

“Friday, you with me?” Tony said.

“It’s good to hear from you, Mr. Stark,” Friday said. 

“You have no idea,” Tony said.  “All systems go?  We’re currently evading some missiles.”  
  
“You don’t waste any time getting back to work.  Armed and ready.”

The Quinjet took off, and moments later, a missile blew up just below it.

Tony peered at the Quinjet’s controls over Steve’s shoulder.  “They don’t have a lock on us yet. The ECM is still working, but now that we’re in motion they’ll get a hold of our heat signature.”  
  
“Any suggestions?” Steve asked as he pulled back on the thruster and took them into a sharp ascent.  “One of the helicopters took off after Clint and Nat, but we still have another and a jet on our tail.”

“The Quinjet has more missile defense systems than most aircraft carriers,” Tony said.  “We should be able to stay in the air for a while, but the question is where to go.”

“I’m taking us out over the ocean,” Steve said.  “We have to keep this away from civilians.”

The defensive systems were getting a workout: the electronic countermeasures were confusing the targeting of most of the missiles, and the chaff took care of the rest.  But the Quinjet had been armed for quick escape and invisibility, not for battle.  They had no way to fight back; whoever was on their tail would just keep firing.  The jet rattled as a rocket clipped the left wing, and sirens blared as several more blew up within meters of the cockpit.  The truth sunk in slowly.  

“We have to bail out,” Tony said.

“Tony - ”

“They’ll catch us eventually,” Tony said.  “Something will get through and it’ll be over.  They’ll have to split up to follow the jet and the suit.  We can’t outrun both, but we might be able to outrun one.”

Steve’s jaw clenched.  “Damn it.   _Damn_  it.”  He put the jet on autopilot and plugged in the coordinates to keep it going straight out toward the ocean as far as it could go, then picked up his shield strapped it onto his back.

“Hand-holds please, Friday,” Tony said, and the two handles popped out of the suit at his shoulders.

“That’s new,” Steve said.

“I got sick of carrying Barton around princess style,” Tony said, snapping his faceplate shut.  “Ready?”

Steve opened the pilot’s hatch in the top of the jet, then wrapped his hands around the suit’s handles.

“Ready.”

Tony shot straight up out of the hatch.

The last six months fell away with the jet.  Saving the world was pretty cool, and it was convenient to be able to make a spectacular entrance, but _this_  was the best part of being Iron Man, this was what he’d missed most after he’d destroyed his suits, what he’d dreamed of as he laid on his metal cot on the Raft: flying.  He hadn’t breathed so deeply in years.

“The jet is in pursuit of the Quinjet,” Friday said in his ear.  “The helicopter is banking to follow us.”

“Copy that,” Tony said.  “Wrist-mounted rockets, if you’d be so kind.”  Tony looked over his shoulder and locked on.

“Tony, what are you - ”

The rocket on his right wrist shot off and blew up just below the helicopter.

“I’m not targeting them,” Tony yelled.  “I’m just trying to get them off our backs.  Friday, we’re talking evasive maneuvers _only._ ”

“Understood, sir.”

“Any thoughts on a destination, Cap?  We might be able to outrun them, but if they’re tracking my heat signature, it won’t be for long.” 

“Go east,” Steve yelled.  “We might be able to lose them in the mountains.”

“Sir, the helicopter is prepared to fire a missile, I suggest you take immediate evasive action,” Friday said.

Tony shot upwards, arcing through the air and shooting off blasts from his lasers to draw the rocket’s attention, but it was no use; he’d been painted by their radar, and as Tony looked over his shoulder, the beeping grew louder and louder until the missile was just yards away, aiming straight for his back - for Steve’s _head_.

“Shit,” Tony yelled, and he rolled over.

The rocket hit him square in the chest, and he felt his breath whoosh out of him; he held his hands out and shot backwards, absorbing the force of the explosion.

“Cap?” he said.  “Still there?”

“I’m fine,” Steve said.  “But the suit - ”

“Sir, we’ve taken damage,” Friday said.  “Navigation is offline, weapons are rebooting and we’re experiencing a massive power drain.”

“Okay, couple options here,” Tony said.  “Option A, we keep going as long as we can, and we risk losing power and eventually falling out of the sky. Option B, we keep going and we risk getting hit by another rocket that wipes the suit’s power completely, and we fall out of the sky faster.  Thoughts?”

“Attitude control is failing,” Friday said.  

“All right, option C it is,” Tony said, going into a dive.  “Anybody see a place to land?”  He urged the suit on, the power module in the upper right corner blinking angrily at him as he pushed his speed higher.  He could hear the helicopter gaining on them.

“We need to get on the ground,” Steve yelled, his voice stripped away by the wind.  “Find a clearing and lose them in the trees.”

They sped over a spiderweb of lights, and Tony dipped lower, searching for a clearing, but the trees were too thick.

“Sir, there is a second missile on a collision course,” Friday said.  “Impact in 30 seconds.”

“Shit,” Tony said.  “We can’t land while we’re going this fast, Cap, you’ll - ”

“I’ve survived worse,” Steve said.  “Get us on the ground, Tony.”

“Twenty seconds.”

“Hold on tight,” Tony said, and dove.  The forest hurtled toward him, and he scanned desperately for a break in the trees, ignoring the screaming of the power warning, and finally caught a glimpse of hard-packed dirt; he was about to blow out his repulsors but they were going to _make_  it.

“ - four, three, two - ”

“Brace!” he yelled, and cut the power.  They dropped into the clearing, and the missile exploded in the trees behind them.  Tony careened toward the ground, but they were descending too rapidly and he’d burned too much power, and his hand repulsors stuttered as the dirt rushed up toward him.

“Steve!” he yelled.  “Hold - ”

-

“ - sir.  Sir.  Mr. Stark, can you hear me?” 

Tony blinked.  “Friday?  Where am I?”

“Germany, sir. About 120 kilometers from Cologne.”

Cologne.  What was he doing outside Cologne?  He’d been at home, in the Tower - no, he’d been in prison, listening to the waves - _no_  - 

“Steve.” Tony sat up and pushed his face plate up.   “Steve!”  

They were in a clearing, though by the look of things it hadn’t been much of a clearing until they’d landed in it.  There was a groan from behind him, and Tony whirled around and caught a glimpse of vibranium in the early morning sunlight.  

“Tony?”

“Hey, we hit the ground really hard, sorry about that, totally my bad,” Tony said, crawling toward Steve as he stirred.  “You okay?”  
  
“Been better,” Steve said, wincing and pushing himself upright.  “I thought I said to find a clearing.”

“That’s what I did.”

“You crashed us into a bunch of trees.”

“I worked with what I had,” Tony said.  “Hey, you’re bleeding.”  

Steve wiped the blood out of his eyes impatiently.  “We need to find cover, they’ll be searching the area for us.”

“I’ve powered down all systems except for my own,” Friday said.  “Your heat signature should be nearly invisible to their sensors, but they can still track you visually.”

“How close to the nearest town?” Tony asked.

“Fourteen kilometers to the northeast.”

“We can’t go into a village,” Steve said.  He pushed himself to his feet, but he looked a little dazed; his face was covered in dirt and blood, and Tony could see a bruise purpling below his eye.  

“We have to get you, like, a bandaid or something.”  Tony gestured at the blood dripping down his temple.  “This is grossing me out.  No arguments - look, nobody is going to expect to see me in Small Town, Deutschland.”

“Plus, your face is distinctly less recognizable without your trademark goatee,” Friday contributed.  

“See?  Thank you, Friday,” Tony said.  “I knew going full beard in prison would come in handy.”

“Tony - ”

“What did I say about arguments?” Tony said.  “Let’s walk a few miles, and then I’ll ditch the suit.  And - Cap.  You’ll need to leave the shield.  It’s way too recognizable.  We’ll come back for it if we can, okay?”

Steve tightened his grip on his shield, but steeled himself.  “You’re right.  We need to move.  They’ll be regrouping, and the first place they’ll look is where they think we landed.  We need to be far away from here.”

“Exactly.  We’ll get to the village, get you cleaned up, steal a car, and take off for - wherever.”  Tony ran a hand over his face.  “Christ.  I’m going to be running forever.”

“No.  You’re not.”

Tony shrugged and turned toward the direction of the village Friday had mentioned, listening as Steve crunched through the leaves behind him.  

“But if you are, I’ll be running right next to you.”

Tony didn’t reply.

-

The sun was high in the sky by the time they arrived outside the village.  They’d passed a few cabins along the way, and followed the road from deep enough inside the trees that the only living creature that spotted them was a deer.  Steve was almost imperceptibly favoring his left side, holding his arm tightly against his ribs, but Tony decided not to mention it.  

“Don’t buy too much,” Steve, pulling his wallet out of his pocket and handing Tony a handful of Euros as they loitered in the trees outside what passed for the main street.  It had exactly two stoplights.  “Some bandages, water, whatever food you can get.  And don’t talk to anybody.  And don’t - ”

“What do you think I’m going to do, flash my Rolex and strike up a conversation about my Fortune 500 company?  I’ve got this.”

“You’re not exactly known for going undercover,” Steve said dryly.  “Are you sure you don’t want me to - ”

“You look like you just fell out of the sky,” Tony said.  “And you’re almost as famous here as you are at home.  You punched Hitler, remember?”  
  
“I didn’t actually - whatever,” Steve muttered, leaning against a tree and wincing.  “Just be careful.”

“I’m always careful.  Okay, I’m generally careful,” Tony said, and jogged toward the grocery store.  The street was almost deserted; there were three cars in the parking lot, and a few more down the road in front of a bar.  A bell jingled above him as he picked up a basket and tried to remember the last time he’d been in a grocery store.  

He wandered the aisles as casually as possible, trying to look like he was picking up a totally normal assortment of items that someone just passing by on a road trip might be buying: bottles of water, pre-made sandwiches, a couple of bags of chips.  He snagged a travel first aid kid in the sundries aisle and grabbed a bottle of aspirin, which probably wouldn’t have any effect on Steve unless he took about thirty pills, but whatever, it was worth a shot.  

The woman at the register barely glanced up from her phone as Tony set his purchases on the counter.  Tony resisted the urge to point out that the newest StarkPhone had twice the battery life of the iPhone, and tossed an extra chocolate bar on top of the sandwiches.  He pretended to peruse the magazines on the stand next to the register, trying to ignore his own face staring down at him from all of the newspapers on display.  

The woman said something in German, and Tony started, pulling his hand back from a magazine like he’d been burned.  He pulled a 50 euro bill out of his pocket and dropped it on the counter, then grabbed his full bag and walked away without waiting for his change.  He kept his pace steady as he left the store and crossed the road, then looked both ways and jogged into the trees toward Steve’s hiding place.

“How’d it go?”

“Nobody pointed at me and yelled ‘Herr Stark!’ in a German accent, so we’re probably fine,” Tony said, setting down the bag next to Steve and pulling out the first aid kit.  “I’m still front page news, though.”

“Not surprised.  The news channels briefly went to 24-hour Stark coverage after they took you in,” Steve said.  

Tony ripped open an alcohol swab with his teeth.  “So what’s the general sentiment?  Tilt your head up.”

“Mixed,” Steve said.  “Lots of calls for leniency based on your record.  Some suggestions that you were planning something like this all along.  A lot of people wondering who’s in charge of governing people like us in the first place.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised.”  Tony dabbed gently at Steve’s forehead, cleaning away the blood and dirt.  “They let New York go because 10 million people saw aliens coming out of the sky.  Sokovia, they just saw somebody who looked like a bigger version of me lift an entire city in the air, and then they watched me blow it up.”

“They also saw us save most of the city’s residents,” Steve said.  “And prevent a worldwide disaster.  Some people are out for blood, sure, but mostly they just want an explanation.  Kind of like me.”

“Is that what you were looking for when you turned my files over?”  Tony rummaged through the first aid kit for the largest bandage.  “If you’d wanted an explanation, you could have just, I dunno, asked me.”

“I wanted you to be held accountable for Ultron,” Steve said, sounding tired.  “And I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold you accountable myself.”

“Because you’re too close to the situation.”

“No.  Because I care about you too much.” 

“Hold still,” Tony said.  He cupped Steve’s chin with one hand and placed the bandage over the cut on his forehead with the other.  “There.  All patched up.  Except for the black eye, and what better be bruised ribs and not any broken ones.”

“Cracked at worst,” Steve said.  “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Tony said, tossing the first aid kit back into the paper bag and pulling one of the sandwiches out of the bag.  “Seriously, don’t.  I don’t want to be on nurse duty for the whole team.”

“Nobody else wants that either.”  Steve caught the apple Tony tossed him and shined it on his dirt-smeared shirt.  “You get any candy?”

-

“That one.”

“Too new.  I told you, 1994 or earlier.  How do you not know anything about hot wiring a car?”

“Excuse me for _buying_  my cars instead of stealing them,” Tony said.  

Steve rolled his eyes.  “The silver one.  I think it’s old enough, and it has a back seat for the suit.  It’ll do.  Keep watch on the road.”

“Roger that.”  They crept forward into the parking lot of the bar; it had filled up at nightfall, and there was loud music playing, but the parking lot was quiet and deserted.

They walked casually - or, as casually as two world-famous superheroes currently on the run could possibly be - toward the silver sedan, and Tony leaned against the door and looked up and down the road for anybody driving by.

Steve pulled out his swiss army knife and stuck it into the driver’s side keyhole.  “I hate this part,” he muttered.  “We’ll never be able to bring this car back to its owner.”

“We need it more than they do,” Tony said, craning his neck to peer toward the bar.  “Anyway, nobody here should be driving home.  Listen to them.  And they say Americans are rowdy drunks.”

Steve jimmied the keyhole.  “I’m afraid it’s going to break.  We might have to wait until tomorrow if I can’t get this one open.”

“There’s a car coming,” Tony said as headlights blazed past the bar.  “It’s turning into the parking lot.  It’s slowing down, shit, shit - ”

“Come here,” Steve said, and before Tony could react, Steve shoved him up against the door of the car and pressed up against him.

“Uh,” Tony said.  “What are you doing?”

“Taking a page out of Natasha’s book,” Steve said.  Tony froze as Steve leaned his forehead against Tony’s and cupped his face in one large hand, effectively blocking him from view.  Tony barely had time to work out that it was camouflage before all the blood drained out of his head.

The car pulled up, the gravel crunching under its tires, and Tony caught Steve’s eyes and held them.  There was a non-zero chance that they weren’t getting out of it this time, that they had been found, that the last thing Tony would feel before the cold burn of a bullet in his skull was Steve Rogers, so close he could almost taste him - 

“Sorry to interrupt,” said Agent Coulson from a cherry red convertible, “but do you guys want a ride?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all of the wonderful comments - chatting with all of you has been fantastic and inspiring.

“Are you fucking _kidding_  me?”

Tony opened his mouth, then closed it.  “That’s what I was going to say.”

Steve dropped his hands from Tony’s face and turned around slowly.  “You were supposed to be dead.”

“It’s a long story,” Coulson said.  “Do you want to keep trying to steal that car, or do you want to just take mine?”

“Does anybody ever _actually_  die, or does Fury just pretend?” Steve sighed.  “How did you find us?”

“My team has been tracking your progress since the breakout at the Raft,” Coulson said, putting the convertible in park and getting out of the driver’s seat.  “Impressive, by the way.  Maybe one day you can tell us how you did it so we can stop it from happening again.”

“Your team?” Steve said.  “Somebody else knows we’re here?”

“You can trust my team.  The rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t involved.  In fact, I’ll probably be called in front of the governing board if they ever find out I did this.” 

Tony raised an eyebrow.  “S.H.I.E.L.D. has a governing board?”

“So many long stories,” Coulson said.  He popped the trunk of the car.  “There’s a tent and some sleeping bags, and enough food and water for a week.  And a phone, but you should know that the rest of the Avengers’ phones are tapped, so be careful who you contact.”

Tony walked around the car, kneeling next to one of the tires.  “This is nice.  What is this, a 1964?”

“1962,” Coulson said.  “There’s a map in the glovebox.  The WSC thinks you managed to obscure your heat signature and make it all the way to Berlin.  I’d recommend going in the opposite direction.  Italy is nice this time of year.”

“If we take the car, how are you going to get out of here?” Steve said, his brow furrowed.

“You’re not the only one with access to a Quinjet, Captain.”  

Tony finished his inspection of the car.  “Agent, does this car - ?”  

“Yes.  And it’s Director now.  On that note, you might be happy to hear that somebody leaked that the WSC was planning to execute you without trial, and the general sentiment is swinging back in your direction.”  Coulson slammed the trunk shut.  “For reasons I can’t understand, the public loves you, Stark.  And so does your team.”

“Do you know if Clint and Natasha - ?”

“They know how to keep themselves hidden.  They’ll be fine.”

Steve held out his hand.  “We should get on the road, we’ve already been here too long.  Thank you, Director.  It’s good to see you.  I’d like to hear that long story when we come home.”  
  
Coulson shook his hand.  “Happy to tell it.”

“Why are you doing this?” Tony said.  “You don’t like me.”

“No, I don’t,” Coulson said.  “But a lot of people make mistakes.  I’ve made a few of my own the last couple of years.  I’m glad nobody executed me for mine.”  

He held his hand out, and Tony shook it.  

“Wait a second,” Tony said.  “Do you have a _robot arm_?”

“Like I said,” Coulson said.  “It’s - “  

“Don’t tell me.  A long story?”

Coulson smiled and tossed Steve the keys to the red convertible.  “You’re a fast learner.  Oh, and by the way?” he said as Steve eased into the driver’s seat.  “If you get so much as a scratch on Lola, I’ll kill you myself.”

-

They spent the night finding the suit and the shield and fitting them into the surprisingly spacious trunk; one of the suit’s arms ended up stuffed in the glove box, but they made it work and were on the road before dawn.  

After a stop in Frankfurt to buy some clothes and a few weak disguises (“I’m not wearing a baseball cap, do you know what these things do to my hair?”) and an inordinate amount of arguing over what to listen to on the radio, Tony fell asleep in the passenger seat.

“Coffee?”

Tony sat up and blinked in the late afternoon sunlight.  “Where are we?”

“Switzerland,” Steve said.  “Can you take this?  There aren’t any cupholders.”

Tony took the proffered cup.  “Okay, so I’m assuming we’re not here to ski.  What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to Italy,” Steve said.  “Coulson mentioned it, and I don’t think that was an accident.  There used to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse outside Milan, but Natasha had intel that it was lost to HYDRA.  I think Coulson was trying to tell us we should go there.”

“If he was trying to tell us that, why didn’t he just _tell_  us?”  Tony sipped his coffee moodily.  “Why the secret agent act?”

“Probably because he’s a secret agent,” Steve said.  “But tonight we’re camping.”

“Do we have to?  I have a chateau in the Alps,” Tony said.  “Ugh.  Camping.  Why do people even camp, anyway?”

“Don’t ask me,” Steve said.  “I’m from Brooklyn.”

-

“You know I didn’t actually punch Hitler, right?”

Tony looked up from the phone, which was laid out on a blanket in pieces in front of him.  He was woefully undersupplied to turn it into a secure radio transmitter, but he’d done more with less.  “Huh?”  
  
“The other day, you said I was famous in Germany because I punched Hitler.  But I never actually fought Hitler.  That was just for the reels.”

“Oh.  Yeah, I know.  I was teasing you.  It was a joke.  Ever heard of it?”

Steve threw another stick on the fire.  “Sometimes I just wonder what they actually teach kids about me.”

“I don’t know what they teach kids.  I skipped, like, six grades,” Tony said.  He picked up his third glass of the whiskey he’d found under the passenger seat of the Corvette.  “But I do know what my dad told me about you.”  He grabbed a screwdriver from the toolbox and began to pry apart the phone’s battery.  “He told me you were an idiot.”

“Your dad always was kind of an asshole.”

“You’re telling me.”  The fire crackled, building slowly but steadily.  “That’s not all he said, though.”  


“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah.  He told me that you took too many chances.  And that you picked fights you couldn’t possibly win.  That you laid down your life for your friends too many times to count.”  Tony picked up the screwdriver and the motherboard.  “For the record, he thought that was pretty stupid.  You might have noticed that Dad generally tried to build something to put out the flames so he didn’t have to walk into the fire.  He wasn’t really one for heroics.” 

“Guess you must have gotten that from your mom,” Steve said.

Tony snorted and tilted his head back, draining his glass.  “You know, my dad may have built weapons of mass destruction, but at least he never gave any of them a mind of their own.”

“Didn’t he?” Steve said.  “When Howard worked with Dr. Erskine on the serum, they could have just as easily made me into Red Skull.  Or the Hulk.  Or something even worse.  They didn’t know what they were getting into.”

“Look,” Tony said.  “You said earlier that you wanted an explanation for why I built Ultron.”  Steve just stared into the flames and didn’t answer, and Tony forged ahead, the words spilling out.  “I did it because you _died_.”

Steve glanced at him sharply.  “What do you - ”

“What I mean is - I saw you die.  You and Clint and Nat and everybody, one of Wanda’s little gifts, and it - it did something to me.  Turned me inside out.   I felt like - like I would do _anything_  to stop that from ever happening.  So, I did the stupidest thing I’ve ever done because I thought that would mean I’d never have to watch you die.”  He snorted.  “Really worked out, right?  Pietro’s dead, Bruce is in hiding, Clint and Nat are on the run, and we’re sitting in the woods in the middle of Switzerland.  Pass the whiskey?”

Steve twisted the cap off the bottle and handed it to Tony.  “You didn’t just think Ultron would keep the world safe.  You thought he would keep _us_  safe.”

“I was being selfish.”

“You were trying to protect us.”

“I was _stupid_ ,” Tony snapped.  

“Well, yeah,” Steve said.  “But I’ve done some pretty stupid things to protect the people I care about.  This one time I broke this guy out of supermax and went on the run with him.  Stupid, right?”  

“Sounds pretty dumb to me.”  

Steve elbowed him.  “Come on, Tony.  I made a joke.  Ever heard of it?”

“Ha, ha,” Tony said, and elbowed him back.  Steve grinned, and the firelight reflected in his eyes, not that Tony noticed things like that.  “I should probably get back to work.  I should have a secure connection set up in a couple of hours.  When was the last time you slept?  I’m good, I’ll stay up tonight and keep watch, you should catch a few hours of shut eye.”

“Oh,” Steve said.  “Right.  Sure, if you’d rather be alone, I’ll - ”

“That’s not what I meant,” Tony said.  “I just thought - ”

“No, you’re right, I should get some sleep,” Steve said.  “Just wake me up iif you get through to Natasha, or - ”

“Sure, yeah,” Tony said.  “Of course, I’ll keep you, uh...”

It might have been the whiskey, or the firelight, or the fact that they were alone in the woods trying to escape from almost certain death, but Tony was sure that Steve was leaning forward, so before he could think about it too much he closed the distance and caught Steve’s mouth, their lips just barely brushing together.

“ - I’ll keep you updated,” Tony said against Steve’s mouth, his voice strangled.  “Sorry.  I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

  
“No,” Steve agreed.  “You probably shouldn’t have.”  He sucked in a deep breath.  “Do it again.”

Tony grinned, and then they were kissing, Steve’s hand wrapped around the back of his neck and Tony’s fingers twisted in Steve’s t-shirt.  They fought for control, each dragging the other closer until they were out of breath; when Tony finally pulled away, he was panting and Steve’s hair was a mess.

“Are you drunk?” Steve asked.

“No.  A little,” Tony revised.  “Doesn’t matter.  I don’t know if you’re waiting for me to say something, but if you are, you’re gonna have to fill in the blanks yourself, because all I can think about right now is how much I want to kiss you again.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear,” Steve said, and hauled Tony forward until they were flush up against each other, until Tony could feel Steve’s heart racing against his own chest.  Tony leaned forward and kissed his neck, sucked on the sensitive skin just below his ear, then ran his hands down Steve’s chest and dipped his fingers just below Steve’s waistband.

“Tent,” Steve murmured.  “Now.”

“Yes, sir.”

They stumbled into the tent and the light went dim as Steve zipped it up behind them.  Tony stripped off his shirt and sat back on his heels as Steve turned to face him, his lips parted slightly and his pupils blown wide.     

Tony grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him forward.  “You’ve done this before, right?  Because I’m not the kinda guy who takes somebody’s virginity on the first date - ” 

“Fuck you,” Steve said.

“If you want,” Tony said, and Steve grinned and lunged faster than Tony could react, pinning him to the ground and grinding against him.  Tony took the opportunity to cup his ass, then pulled Steve’s track pants down over his hips and wrapped his hand around Steve through his thin cotton briefs.  Steve groaned and thrust up into his hand, and Tony lifted his own hips up to meet him.  

“Shit,” Steve gasped into Tony’s neck.

“Language,” Tony said, and Steve caught his lips in a bruising kiss, then slipped his own hand into Tony’s pants and began to stroke him in time, their hot breath filling the tent and sweat mingling between them.  The ground was rocky beneath the thin sleeping bag laid out over the floor of the tent but Tony barely noticed; his world narrowed down to Steve’s mouth and his hand and their bodies pressing together.  It was fast and uncoordinated and desperate, and when Steve threw his head back and groaned, Tony fell over the edge with him.  

“So,” Tony said as he caught his breath, “this is usually when I would make my exit, but I’m kind of afraid there are bears outside.”

Steve snorted and rolled off of him, his hair plastered to his sweaty forehead.  “I don’t think there are any bears in Switzerland.”

“Wolves, then.  Probably wolves.”  Tony kicked his pants off - Jesus, he hadn’t even gotten his pants all the way off, what was he, 16? - and slid into the sleeping bag.  “So I think I’ll just stay put.  Nature’s not really my thing.”  

“Really?  And here I thought you were just being modest about your Boy Scout skills.”  

“You know me better than that, Cap.”

“That’s true,” Steve said over his shoulder as he climbed out of the tent.  “You’re never modest.”

-

Tony had woken up next to a lot of people in his life.  

He’d woken up next to famous actors and politicians and multiple Playboy bunnies (at once), people he loved and people he liked and people whose names he couldn’t even remember.  But he’d never woken up in a tent, in the woods, next to an American icon.  Even for Tony, whose life was an ongoing series of unusual situations, this was unusual.

So he’d done the only thing that seemed reasonable: decide that he was not, under any circumstances, going to think too hard about it.

“Coffee?” 

Steve blinked out at Tony from the tent.  “Where did it come from?”

  
“I made it,” Tony said, holding out a tin cup.  He gestured to the campfire.  “Using fire.”

“You started a fire?” 

“It’s not _that_  hard,” Tony said.  “It only took me, like, ten minutes.”  He held up one of the arms of the Iron Man suit.  “And a laser.”  

“Is it drinkable?” Steve said dubiously, looking down at the cup.

“It’s instant coffee, even I can’t fuck up instant coffee, but thanks for the vote of confidence.  By the way,” Tony said, holding up the phone, “I’ve got a secure connection set up and I sent a message to Rhodey.  If he’s in contact with Natasha and Clint, there’s a chance they’ll be able to get a message to us.”

“Until then, we should get on the road,” Steve said.  “Any chance your newfound camping skills extend to taking a tent down?”  


“It’s cute that you’re even asking,” Tony said.

-

“I cannot even believe this,” Tony said.  “One English station in Switzerland and they’re playing _country music_.”

“It’s not that bad.”  
  
“Wrong,” Tony said.  “It is that bad.  It’s significantly worse than that bad.  Are you even listening?  He just said he wants to check her for _ticks_.  That’s the least romantic thing I’ve ever heard, and I’m Tony Stark.”

“You know,” Steve said thoughtfully, “maybe it’s because I missed the evolution of it all, but I don’t see how country is fundamentally worse than rap.  Or techo.  Or, jeez, _disco_.”

“Are you telling me you don’t - oh my god, you don’t like _disco_?” Tony said.  “How are you even real, no, that is not okay, disco is more than music, it’s a _movement_ \- ”

“Yeah, a terrible one,” Steve said.  “And bell-bottoms?  I’m so glad I missed the seventies.  Talk about dodging a bullet.”

“We are going to have words, Rogers,” Tony said.  “So many words, we are going to - ”

The phone resting between them on the center console rang.  

“Should we pick it up?” Steve said.

“If it’s someone we don’t want to talk to, the fact that they know it exists is bad enough,” Tony said.  “Quick, before it goes to Coulson’s voicemail.”

Steve picked up the phone and turned on the speakerphone.  “Hello?”

“Hey, did somebody order a pizza?” Clint said.  “Just kidding, Rhodey sent us the signal you’re riding.”

“Pizza sounds amazing,” Tony said.  “Where are you?”

“Monte Carlo,” Natasha said.  “Arranging for a chartered flight out of here tomorrow.  Want a ride?”

“We’ve got a pretty sweet one, actually,” Tony said.  “Funny story, did you guys know Coulson is alive?”  
  
“ _What_?” 

“We saw him,” Steve said.  “We’ll tell you about it later.”

“No, I want to hear _now_ , and then I want to punch him in the _face_  - ”

“It can wait,” Natasha cut in.  “Where are you headed?”

“The S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse outside Milan,” Steve said.  “Coulson hinted that it might be available for us, just like our other source.”  
  
“Other source?” Tony said.  “Who’s - ”

“Good,” Natasha said.  “We’ll be there at noon.  We shouldn’t stay on this line too long.”

“Look, if somebody picked it up when I hacked it this morning, it’s too late,” Tony said.  “There’s no way anybody knows what they’re looking for, but a half decent programmer could trace our signal in six hours, I could do it in two, but either way, if they were able to find it, that means they already know where we are.  And if they already know where we are, then we’re - ”

The back windshield exploded in a hail of bullets.

“ - fucked,” Tony said.  

“Step on it!” Steve yelled, dropping the phone and grabbing his shield.  

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Tony said as he slammed on the gas.  He glanced in the rearview mirror; a man was leaning out of the passenger side window of a black SUV and taking aim again.

“Get down,” Tony said, twisting around a bend in the road so fast that the tires squealed.  Steve brought the shield up behind their heads and Tony heard a fresh set of bullets zinging away.  “Coulson is gonna flip, this car is priceless - ”

“You can buy him a new one,” Steve said, rolling the side window down and reaching out.  He fired four shots; one connected with the first SUV’s windshield and it swerved away, revealing two more behind it.  

“Oh, shit,” Tony said.  He glanced down at the dashboard, taking another curve too fast.  To the right, the Alps towered, a sheer cliff face without any place to turn off the road and lose their tail; to the left, a valley carved its way out of the mountains, revealing a several hundred foot drop awaiting their first wrong move.  “Hey, Cap?  Question.”

“Little busy here,” Steve said, ducking back behind the shield as the second SUV sprayed them with machine gun fire.  Tony winced and put his hand on the gear shift.  

“Yeah, this is important,” Tony said, pressing down even harder on the gas, feeling the wheel shake as it went faster and faster.  “Look, I - do you trust me?”  
  
“What?”  Steve leaned out the window again and fired off another shot.  “What are you talking - ”

“I said, do you trust me?”

Steve opened his mouth, and Tony braced himself.

“Yes,” Steve said.  “Yes, of course - what - ”

Tony grabbed him by the back of the neck, dragged him forward, and kissed him - 

-and jerked the wheel until they drove off the edge of the road.

They caught a second of zero G as they careened toward the valley, and Steve stiffened under Tony’s lips.  He grabbed the front of Tony’s shirt and twisted around toward the windshield, his mouth opening in horror, and Tony wondered for a second if maybe Steve was about to pull them both out of the car and make him really regret the whole don’t-mention-the-car-flies-thing - 

\- but then the car started flying, just like Tony knew - well, hoped - that it would, pulling itself out of its nosedive and regaining some altitude, and Tony gripped the steering wheel and eased his foot off the gas.

“Are we _flying_?” Steve yelled. 

“Yeah, I probably should have mentioned that Lola can fly,” Tony said as the black SUVs got further and further away in the rearview mirror.

“You _knew_  and you didn’t - how does it _fly_?” Steve said, his hand still fisted in Tony’s t-shirt.  “I thought we didn’t have flying cars.”

“We don’t,” Tony said.  “We have prototypes of flying cars that my dad decided weren’t ever going to be profitable enough to take to market.  Specifically, Coulson has one.”  Tony grinned, gently pulling Steve’s hand away from his shirt.  “There are only four left that I know of.   _I_  don’t even have one.”

“You kissed me so I wouldn’t notice we were driving off a _cliff_ ,” Steve said accusingly.

“It was a dual-purpose kiss,” Tony said.  “I’m not sure how long it’ll actually be able to fly, though, so you wanna start looking for a place to set her down?”

Steve leaned out the window.  “There’s a road lower in the valley at your nine o’clock, and a field a few miles straight ahead.”

“You know,” Tony said as he banked toward the road, “I’ve never bothered putting the repulsor technology on a car, but I’d underestimated how cool this is.”

“I’m sure Agent Coulson wouldn’t mind an upgrade,” Steve said.

-

The safehouse was a run down, crumbling shack in a run down, crumbling suburb of Milan, but if HYDRA had ever controlled it, they were long gone.  It was empty, and by the time Steve had ascertained that the perimeter was clear and nobody could spot Lola from the street, Tony had the electricity up and running, a single lightbulb buzzing in the bedroom and the refrigerator noisily making ice in the kitchen.

“I still maintain that we should’ve gone to the chateau,” Tony said as Steve set his shield down by the door.

“Hey, we have indoor plumbing,” Steve said.  “Good enough for me.”

“You know what else we have?”

“What?”

Tony smirked and took a step forward.  “A bed.  Any idea what we might be able to do with it?”

“You’re even worse than the tabloids say,” Steve muttered, and they met in the middle, lips crashing together in a bruising battle of a kiss.  

“You read about me in the tabloids, Cap?  I’m honored,” Tony said, catching Steve’s bottom lip between his teeth.  Steve groaned and tangled his hands in Tony’s hair, and Tony took the opportunity to push him up against the nearest wall.  

“I can’t believe you - ah - drove us off a cliff,” Steve said, tilting his head back as Tony pressed kisses down his throat.  “You do not deserve - oh, God - you do not deserve to get laid - ”

“And yet,” Tony said, dragging him towards the bedroom.

-

  
The first time Tony woke up in the middle of the night, he elbowed Steve.

“Mmmf.  What.”

“Natasha was right.”

Steve cracked an eye.  “Hmm?”

Tony grabbed the edge of the comforter and yanked it up to his shoulders.  “You _are_  a blanket hog.”  

Steve whacked him in the head with a pillow, and Tony rolled over and fell back to sleep grinning.

-

The second time Tony woke up in the middle of the night, Steve was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second to last chapter, and the last one will be quite long. Thanks so much to everyone for your wonderfully kind feedback - I appreciate it immensely.

Tony laid still, listening hard. 

The rest of the house was quiet - no rustling of newspaper pages from the living room or running water in the bathroom - and Tony felt more than heard that it was completely empty.  He was alone.

He rolled over and wrapped his hand around the gun under his side of the bed and carefully pulled on his boxers and pants, then crept into the living room.

The lights were off, the curtains closed, the small house drenched in a thick black darkness.  Nothing had been disturbed since they’d gone to sleep; if Steve had left, he’d done so under his own power, of his own volition.  Tony felt along the counter for the car keys, his horror mounting with every second, his throat closing up because he knew, now, that there was nothing at all wrong, nothing except that Steve had decided to leave, Steve had left him behind, Steve was _gone_  -   

His hands closed around the car keys, and he was flooded with relief so acute that he gripped the edge of the counter to keep his knees from giving out.  He took a deep breath and slipped the glock into his waistband.  Tony padded to the door, slipping on his shoes, and opened it slowly so it wouldn’t creak, then peered down into the driveway, one hand still on the gun at his hip, and stepped out into the yard.

It was brighter outside than it had been in the house.  Tony blinked, letting his eyes adjust, and as his night vision took over he saw - he saw two orange pinpricks of light at the edge of the property.  The burn of a cigarette - of _two_  cigarettes.

He crept forward, taking the gun slowly out of his waistband, holding it steady in both hands, the scent of smoke drifting toward him.

“ - might not make it,” said an unfamiliar voice.  “You should send him alone.”

“I’m not gonna do that,” and that was _Steve_ , that was Steve hiding in the shadows, talking to someone Tony couldn’t make out.  “You wouldn’t if it were me.”

  
“But it’s not you,” the stranger said.  “It’s _Stark_.”

“In the flesh,” Tony said, raising the gun and stepping forward.

A second later, the gun had been stripped from his hand, and his arm was wrenched behind his back, just at the edge of snapping.  Tony nearly fell to his knees, trying to use his weight to twist the man over his head, but the fingers - cold and hard - around his wrist just tightened.

“No,” Steve said.  “Let him go, Bucky - ”

“Fuck, you _know_  this guy, Cap?” Tony gasped, tears squeezing out of his eyes.  

“He was sneaking up on us,” the other man said, but he released Tony, and Tony stumbled forward.  Steve caught him by the shoulders and levered him upright, and Tony whirled around to glare at the other man.  

He was tall, almost as tall as Steve, with long brown hair and angry eyes and _Jesus fucking Christ was that another robot arm_?  Seriously, when had robot arms become such a _thing_?

“Who the hell _are_  you?” Tony said, rubbing his wrist.

Steve put his hand on Tony’s shoulder, the gesture more restraining than comforting.  “Tony, this is Bucky.  Bucky Barnes.”  
  
“Who the hell is,” Tony said, and paused.  He narrowed his eyes at the metal-armed man, then at Steve, and then back at the man.  “I didn’t know you brought friends with you from the past, Cap.”

“Neither did I,” Steve said.  

“He’s supposed to be dead,” Tony said.

“Whoops,” Barnes said.

“HYDRA captured him,” Steve explained.  “They…”

“Experimented on me,” Barnes said.  “Brainwashed me.  Turned me into their assassin.  Take your pick.”

Tony raised his eyebrows.  “How’d you get away?”  
  
“I didn’t,” Barnes said shortly.

“We’re working on breaking his programming,” Steve said.  “Natasha has some experience with that.  For now, he’s reporting to HYDRA as normal.”  
  
“Great,” Tony said.  “So an agent of HYDRA has been following us around Europe.  Good to know.  Cool, well, look, I don’t want to interrupt this little reunion, I’m clearly not needed here - ”

“Tony, Bucky’s the reason we knew they were going to kill you,” Steve said.  “It’s HYDRA.  They’re pulling the strings from within the World Security Council - we thought it was just Pierce, but at least a few of his lieutenants didn’t reveal himself when the rest of HYDRA came out, and they’re stronger than we thought they were.  Bucky’s getting us information from the inside.”

“And tracking us even though we’re trying to be untrackable, apparently,” Tony said, turning to Steve.  “You ever think maybe he’s the one telling HYDRA where we are?”

“He’s not,” Steve said flatly.  “I trust him.”  
  
“More than you trust me, clearly, considering you didn’t bother to tell me some undead war buddy of yours is following us - ”

“The fact that he even exists is on a need to know basis,” Steve said.

“ - and, oh, HYDRA is involved?” Tony said.  “They really are the gift that keeps on giving.  So let me get this clear, I can suck your dick, but I can’t know we’re being tailed?”  


“Too much information,” Barnes put in.  

Tony ignored him.  “And okay, look, I get that you trust him, but how do we know _he’s_  not being followed?  How do we know he doesn’t have some kind of tracker in his arm which, by the way, I think I should get some credit for not mentioning the arm before now, seriously, what is the _deal_  - ”

“He’s clean,” Steve said.  “Fury’s had him checked out.”

“ _Fury_  - okay, Fury knows, and Natasha knows, everybody knows but me, do I know _anything_?  You know, for all you’re insisting that you trust me, Steve, you’re doing a pretty good job proving that you don’t.” 

“I should take off,” Barnes said, dropping his cigarette on the ground.

“Buck,” Steve said, but Tony interrupted.

“No, please, feel free to stay,” Tony said.  “I’m the one who should go.  Can I have my gun back?”

Barnes held it out silently. 

“Good to meet you,” Tony said.  “Kind of.  Catch you guys later.”

“Tony - ”

“I won’t wait up,” Tony said, not even looking at Steve as he turned away.  

By the time Steve came back inside, Tony was curled up on the sofa with one of the pillows from the bedroom and a throw blanket pulled up to his neck.    

“Tony,” Steve said.  “You awake?”

Tony didn’t reply, which was so _not_  his style, but none of this was his style, _none_  of it.  Steve stood in the doorway for another minute, and then he turned and went into the bedroom and closed the door gently behind him and Tony curled up into himself and they were no where near the ocean, not even close, but the Raft crept back in and he could hear the waves lapping at the shore again.

-

The mood in the house was somewhere between “icy” and “frozen over” when Clint and Natasha showed up the next day.  

“Bongiorno!” Clint said cheerfully.  He looked between Steve and Tony, who were sitting as far apart from each other as they could get while still being in the same room.  “Jeez, what’s up in here?  Lover’s quarrel?” 

“How did you know - ” Steve started, then cut himself off.  

“I didn’t, but I do now,” Clint said, grinning.  “Pay up, Nat!”  


Natasha pulled out her wallet, cursing under her breath in Russian. 

“I hate you guys,” Tony said conversationally.  

“Sounds about right,” Clint said.  

“No, not just for the betting on my sex life, though we’ll get back to that.  We had a little visit last night.  Bucky Barnes ring any bells?”

Natasha turned to Steve.  “He was here.”

“Got it in one,” Tony said.

“But that means - ”

“HYDRA’s nearby,” Steve finished.  “They’re tracking us.”

“Which means we need to get you out of here,” Clint said.  

“I’ll handle transport,” Natasha said.  “Steve, you’re coming with.”

Steve arched an eyebrow, but pulled on his cap and followed her out the door; Tony studiously avoided watching him walk away.

“So,” Clint said, flopping down on the sofa across from Tony.  He propped his feet up on the coffee table and raised his eyebrows. 

“So what?” 

“So you and Steve are totally doing it.”

“Not having this conversation.”

“Uh, yeah, you are.  First question: does he sing the national anthem before you get started?”

“It’s God Bless America, and it’s during.”

“Knew it,” Clint said.  “So what’d you do to piss him off?”

“First of all, I’m the one who’s pissed, and second of all I’m now also pissed at you for assuming _I_  was the one who fucked up,” Tony said.

“Just playing the odds.  So what’d _he_  do?”

“He didn’t tell me that Bucky fucking Barnes was following us, and also HYDRA, and also _alive._ ”

Clint rolled off the sofa and headed to the kitchen.  “So what?  Nat didn’t read me in on that until, like, a week ago.  Crazy shit, right?  Jesus, you two were so busy making out that you couldn’t even pick up a six pack?”

“You don’t think I should’ve been told?” Tony said.  “That, you know, HYDRA’s the reason all of this is happening?”

Clint shrugged, shoulder-deep in the fridge.  "What’s it matter?  Some people want you dead, other people want you not-dead.  Steve’s on the not-dead side.  Cut him some slack.”  

“I just thought he - ” Tony bit off the rest of the sentence; he wouldn’t whine about Steve not trusting him.  

Clint seemed to hear it anyway.  “The guy carries around the weight of two worlds on his shoulders, Tony.  He’s trying to save your life, he’s trying to save Barnes’s life, now he’s juggling having, like, a bunch of penis feelings for you - ”

“Oh my god, this is truly a new low, I’m getting lectured by a guy who just used the phrase ‘penis feelings’.”

“ - and it’s kind of a lot of balls in the air, right?  He’s not keeping things from you to be a dick.  He’s keeping things from you to try to keep everybody he cares about alive.  They call it _need to know_  for a reason - because if somebody knows who doesn’t need to, people get killed.  And Cap’s lost a lot of people already.”

“So what you’re saying is that you think I overreacted, and Captain Perfect was just doing what he thought was best.”  Tony paused.  “Actually, when I put it that way, it sounds pretty reasonable.”

“My work here is done.”  Clint unscrewed the cap on a jar of pickles and drained half the juice in one gulp.  “And Nat thought she was giving _me_  the difficult one.  Now tell me about Coulson.  How’d he seem?”

“Pretty much all I noticed was ‘not dead’,” Tony said.  “Oh, and he has a robot arm.”

“Cool,” Clint said.  “Definitely gonna punch him in the face next time I see him.”  

“Totally fair.”

-

“Pack up,” Natasha said when she and Steve got back an hour later.  “We’ve got a plane, we’re out of here in thirty minutes.”

“That’s just enough time for sandwiches,” Clint said, holding out a plate, and Natasha shrugged and took two.

“Hey,” Tony said quietly to Steve as he took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair.  “Can I talk to you?”

Steve raised an eyebrow.  “Can it wait?  We need to clear out.”

“Hey, guys?” Clint called from the window, half a sandwich hanging limply from his hand.  “Uh, I have good news and bad news.”

“What’s the bad news?” Natasha asked.

“The bad news is that there’s a bunch of guys dressed in black just past the property line, so I _think_  HYDRA found us,” Clint said.  

Steve grabbed his shield and lunged for the door, and Natasha was on her feet with guns in the air before Tony had even stood up to move toward the suit.  “Good news better be real good to make up for that, Barton.”

“It is,” Clint said, turning away from the window with a grin.  “They’re sending in the Winter Soldier.”

The door slammed open, and Bucky Barnes stepped inside holding an M4.

“Duck,” he said calmly, and Tony didn’t have to be told twice - he hit the floor as the room exploded in gunfire.  He held up his hands to protect the back of his head from the shattering glass and plaster and heard Clint cursing under his breath next to him.

The gunfire stopped.  Tony raised his head.

“We have less than three minutes until the rest of them get the all clear to come in,” Barnes said, kicking the door shut behind him.  “What’s the plan?”

“What do they know?” Steve asked, getting to his feet and throwing the shield in Barnes’s direction; Barnes caught it and spun around, slamming it into the wall.  

“They know Stark’s here,” Barnes said.  “They have a tracker in him.”

“ _What_?” Tony said.  “What do you mean, a tracker _in_  me - “

“I don’t know the technical details,” Barnes said.  “But they tagged you somehow, probably while you were on the Raft.  Come on, ain’t anybody gonna shoot at me?”

Natasha fired two shots at the wall next to Barnes as she crossed the room to Tony.  “Any ideas?”

“For where they embedded a tracker in my _body_?” Tony said.  “No, I don’t have any fucking _ideas_  - ”

“Could be in his spinal cord,” Clint said casually.  “I knew a guy once who - you know, nevermind, that one doesn’t end well.”

“We’ll deal with it later,” Natasha said.  “Cap?  Make the call.”

Steve stared at Tony for a long, tense moment, then nodded once and turned to Barnes.

“We have to make it look like it was a good fight,” he said.

Barnes sighed.  “Yeah, I know.”

“Wait,” Tony said.  “What?”

Steve yanked his shield out of the wall.  “I’m going with him.”

Tony blinked.  “Excuse me?  You’re going _with_  him?”

“If Barnes comes out alone, they’ll know he’s with us,” Natasha said.  

“And if I take _you_  in, you’re never getting out alive,” Barnes said.  

“But Steve will?”

“Steve’s more valuable alive,” Natasha continued.

“Probably,” Barnes contributed.

“No,” Tony said, stepping toward Steve.  “No, absolutely not.  There’s no way - ”

“Tony,” Steve said.  

“Don’t tell me what to do, Rogers.  I didn’t ask for any of this, I didn’t ask to be broken out of prison and I _definitely_  didn’t ask for you to turn yourself over to HYDRA in my place - ”

“And I’m doing it anyway.”

“You’re not doing _anything_ ,” Tony snarled, clenching his fists.  “Nobody else is dying for my mistakes, _nobody_ \- ”  

“This isn’t up to you,” Steve snapped, taking a step forward until he was close enough for Tony to take a swing, which he was seriously considering at this point - 

Natasha raised her gun and fired three shots into the wall right above Tony’s head; Tony and Steve both jumped back.

Natasha raised an eyebrow.  “This is supposed to be a fight.”

“It makes sense, Tony,” Clint said quietly.  

“No it doesn’t,” Tony said.  “Staying together makes sense, not turning ourselves into HYDRA makes sense but this, _this_  does not make sense.”

Barnes kicked over a chair, and it splintered into pieces.  “We gotta move.  If you want a goodbye kiss, Steve, it better be now.”

“Get him out of here,” Steve said to Natasha.  “And don’t come back for me.”

“Like _fuck_  we won’t come back for - ” Tony started, but Steve grabbed him by the back of the neck and cut him off with a hard, rough press of lips. 

“Ugh, I was joking,” Barnes said.

Steve pulled away, his jaw set, his eyes locked on Tony’s.  “Get in the suit, get to the airport and go.”

“I’ll tranq you if I have to, Stark,” Natasha said.  “We didn’t come all this way to give you up.”  

“Steve,” Tony said.  “Steve, just - ”

“Go,” Steve repeated, and then Natasha was dragging Tony toward the back door and Clint was packing up his weapons and Steve was turning to Barnes and falling into a fighting stance, and as the door slammed shut behind them Tony heard the sickening sound of metal connecting with skin.

-

“Ow, ow, ow, fucking _ow_ , Romanoff - ”

“If you’d just hold still, this would go a lot faster.”

“You are an inch deep in the back of my neck with a pair of tweezers,” Tony snapped.  “You try holding still.”

“It’s like a half inch, tops,” Clint said from the cockpit.

“Didn’t you once have open heart surgery without any meds?  This should be easy.” Natasha did something painful with the scalpel, and Tony cursed in every language he could think of.  “Got it.”

“Okay,” Tony said.  “Just give me a second before you - ”

She yanked the tracker out without warning.

“Mother _fucker,_  holy shit how can something so small hurt so much, Jesus fucking Christ -”

“Won’t even need stitches,” Natasha said, laying a bandage over it.  

“You did great, kiddo,” Clint called over his shoulder.  “You want a lollipop?”

“You can go to hell,” Tony said.  

Natasha carried the tracker to the back of the small private jet and opened the emergency exit.  “Good riddance,” she said, tossing it out into the Mediterranean.  She pulled the exit shut and the alarm shut off, and she settled into the seat across from Tony with a small, pleased smile on her face.

“Your skillset is truly frightening.”  Tony rubbed the back of his neck gingerly.  “So when do we break Cap out?”  
  
“We don’t,” Natasha said flatly.  “Steve can take care of himself.”

“Excuse me?” Tony said.  “I hope you’re not implying that we’re leaving him behind.”  
  
“This is still a mission, Stark,” Natasha said.  “Steve was very clear about our goal, regardless of whether or not he made it.  We don’t have the muscle to go after HYDRA right now, and - ”

“Fuck what we don’t have, what happened to not leaving anybody behind?”

“ - and Rhodey goes in front of Congress in a few hours,” Natasha continued as if she hadn’t been interrupted.  “Which means that for now we sit tight and don’t do anything stupid.”

“Flight attendants, please be seated for landing,” Clint said over the PA.

“Landing?” Tony said, pushing up the window shade to peer outside.  “Where the hell are we?”

“Welcome to Milan,” Clint said.  “Why would we ditch a perfectly good safehouse?”

Natasha buckled her seatbelt with a wry smile.  “It’s the last place they’ll look.”

“Plus, I left half a sandwich behind,” Clint added.

“I hate spies,” Tony said, settling back in his seat.

-

It was the Vision who showed up with the news.

Tony wasn’t sure how he found them, but he was part-JARVIS, so he wasn’t exactly surprised to get out of the shower to find him sitting calmly on the sofa with Natasha.  

“Those are not happy faces,” Tony said.

“Congress isn’t moving your case back to the US,” Natasha said. 

“Colonel Rhodes’ and Ms. Potts’ lawyers are attempting to appeal, but I’ve calculated the odds of their success to be approximately six thousand and forty seven to one.”

“And they didn’t believe Rhodes about HYDRA pulling the WSC’s strings?” Clint said from the windowsill.

“Not in the slightest,” Vision said.  “I believe they suggested that Colonel Rhodes’ longtime attachment to Mr. Stark had made him an unreliable witness, and recommended that his commission be reviewed.”   

“That settles it, then,” Tony said.

“What settles what?” Clint said.  

“I’ll turn myself in,” Tony said.    


“Like hell you will,” Clint said.  

“It’ll be a trade,” Tony said.  “Me for Steve.”

Clint’s eyebrows almost disappeared into his hair.  “You really think HYDRA will trade Captain America for _you_?  Jesus, your ego is worse than I thought.”

“They planted a tracker in my neck, they followed me around the world, apparently I’m worth _something_  to them,” Tony snapped.  “It’s like you said: we don’t have the muscle to go after HYDRA.  The government won’t take me back; I can run all I want, but eventually this will catch up with me.  We need to focus on getting Steve out of there, and the only chance we’ve got is sending me in as a trade.”

“So what you’re saying,” Natasha said, “is that you’re going to walk into a HYDRA base that we haven’t even found yet and ask nicely if they’ll release their sworn enemy of over 70 years?”

“It sounds kind of stupid when you put it that way, but yes,” Tony said.  

“Veto,” Clint said.

“You don’t have veto power, Barton.”  
  
“Yeah, but I have shoot-you-in-the-kneecap power.” 

“I’m not sure this a productive conversation,” Vision said mildly.  “Mr. Stark, perhaps you’d like to join me in the garage?  I was able to bring along a few items from your workshop in case you’d like to make any repairs to the Iron Man suit.”

“Don’t try to distract me,” Tony said.  “I will not be - wait, what did you bring?”

“An assortment of tools, materials, unfinished additions to the armor - ”

“Bingo.”  Tony turned to Natasha and Clint.  “What if I told you I could get a whole team into wherever HYDRA’s keeping Steve without them even knowing we were there?”

“I’d say maybe I won’t shoot you before you try it,” Clint said.  “But we need more of a smash and grab op when it comes to HYDRA, and we’re a little short on the smash these days.”  

“About that,” Natasha said.  She glanced at her watch and then crossed the room to peer out the window.  “I think I might have a couple of ideas.”

Somebody knocked on the door.

Clint pulled out his bow.  “The fuck?”

“Relax,” Natasha said.  “He’s friendly.  Usually.”

She pulled open the door to reveal a mop of salt and pepper hair, an ugly oversized plaid shirt, and a sheepish smile that took a moment to resolve itself into - Bruce Banner.

“Hey, guys,” Bruce said.

“If I wasn’t so happy to see you, I’d be furious right now,” Tony said.

“I kind of feel the same way about you,” Bruce said.  He dropped his bag on the floor and held a hand out; Tony pushed it aside and threw his arms around the other man.  

“You’re an asshole,” Tony said, pushing him away just as fast as he’d grabbed him.

“Yeah,” Bruce agreed.  He turned to Natasha.  “Hi.”

“Hello,” Natasha said levelly.

Tony clapped Bruce on the back.  “When you two are done with whatever this is, I need you for some science.”

“Science?” Bruce said.

“Science,” Tony said.  “We’re taking down a HYDRA base.”

“Of course we are,” Bruce said.  “What’s the plan?  Walk up and knock on their front door?”

Tony grinned.  “Exactly.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Snapjack, my unbelievably awesome beta, cheerleader, and all-around supporter, without whom I never would have finished this monstrosity, and thank you to all of you for reading and commenting and being so supportive as I tackled something distinctly Out Of My Wheelhouse. It's been such a pleasure to hear from you all - it means more than I can say!

“So I wasn’t expecting an _actual_  front door,” Tony said as he touched down, fist to the ground, “but you can’t beat this for convenience.”

The corner of Germany HYDRA was operating out of was mountainous and forested and exactly what Tony would have expected from HYDRA.  So were the beefy blonde guards raising their Uzis at him from in front of the huge wooden doors set into the side of the mountain that led, according to Natasha’s intel, directly into one of the few remaining HYDRA bases.

“I was sort of hoping we could skip this part,” Tony said as the guards ran toward him.  “Don’t you guys have a doorbell I can ring?” 

****

Unsurprisingly, the guards ignored him in favor of opening fire.  Tony raised his hands as the bullets pinged harmlessly off the suit and slammed both of them into the side of the mountain with his repulsors.  They crumpled to the ground, and Tony flew up to the door and looked straight up into the camera mounted above it.

“Hi, this is Tony Stark to see whatever moron still thinks HYDRA has a chance at world domination?  I don’t have an appointment.”

“Smooth,” Clint muttered in his ear.

Tony ignored him.  “Look, guys, I’m a busy man, I’m trying to walk straight into your evil clutches, do you think you can clear space on your calendar?  No?  Okay, what if I just shoot a rocket through the door?  Yeah, I’m gonna go with that.”  He stepped back and launched his shoulder-mounted rockets; they left a fiery, gaping hole in the steel doors.

“I’m inside,” Tony said, ducking through the smoke.  “Hawkeye and Widow, are you in place?”

“We’re a go,” Natasha said.  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Stark.”

“I always do,” Tony said.  “Iron Man is going radio silent.  See you on the other side, kids.  Friday, cut my connection.”

“Connection cut, sir,” Friday said.  “HYDRA should be unable to track your teammates from your signal.  Relatedly, you have four enemy agents approaching at your three o’clock.”

Tony lifted off with a whir from the repulsors and slammed straight into the lead HYDRA agents.  “Sorry,” Tony said as they crashed into the agents behind them.  “Wow, this hallway wasn’t built for so many people, you guys okay?  Friday, can I get some heatmapping on this place?  Overlay on the HUD, please.”

“Done, sir,” Friday said as indistinct blurs ranging from red to yellow popped up in all directions.  “It appears that this facility extends several levels below the surface.”

“And here I thought they couldn’t get any more stereotypical,” Tony said, taking out the rest of the HYDRA agents in the corridor.  “You thinking we should take this party downstairs?”

“If you’re taking my advice, yes,” Friday said.  Tony pulled open the door the now-crumpled goons had come through and accelerated down the stairs.  “Several life signs in a large cavern, possibly a hangar, two levels below.”

“On it,” Tony said.  Two more HYDRA guards burst into the stairwell, and Tony blasted one down the stairs, then grabbed the other by the throat and slammed him up against the wall.  “What’s it take for a guy to get some attention around here?”

The guard gurgled. 

“I’d say we could do this the easy way or the hard way, but we both know it’s not gonna be the easy way, so let’s just skip ahead,” Tony said, tightening his grip.  “Where’s Captain America?”

The guard pointed down the stairs, and Tony released him; he crumpled to the ground, gasping for breath.  “Friday?”

“There is a cavern down the hallway to your right,” Friday said, pulling up the heat map again.  Tony banked to the right and landed with a crash in front of a large set of steel doors.  “There are several dozen heat signatures inside.”

“Guess that means it’s showtime,” Tony said.  He raised his hand and fired a high-energy repulsor blast at the doors, and they blasted apart, filling the hallway with smoke and sparks.

There was a hail of gunfire, and Tony flew straight through it, taking a quick survey of the cavern.  It was enormous, large enough for a jumbo jet, full of aircraft and armored Hummers and quite a few crates with “StarkIndustries” stamped on them, which Tony would have to look into when this was all over because that was _not_  cool.  HYDRA agents were scrambling into the jets and setting up rocket launchers and firing pointless bullets at him.

“Friday, can I get some volume?  Hey,” Tony said casually, his voice magnified several decibels above its normal range.  “Who’s a guy have to talk to around here to turn himself in?”

Someone fired a rocket at him, and Tony dodged it easily, ducking as it exploded behind him.  “Okay, maybe I’m not making myself clear.  I’m here to arrange a trade.  Me for Captain America.”

“And why would we do that when we already have you both?” came an American voice over the hangar’s loudspeakers.  

“Because I’m throwing my tech into the deal,” Tony said, cutting the repulsors and landing on the concrete floor so hard that it cracked.  “And considering I just proved that I can break into your facility single-handed, you might want to consider my offer.”

“You’re outnumbered, Stark,” the voice said.  “You’ll never get out of here alive.  We have you and your suit already.”

“Right, my suit that only obeys my voice commands unless I explicitly give access codes to someone else,” Tony said.  “If you kill me without the codes, the suit becomes a pile of junk.  A stylish pile of junk, sure, but a pile of junk.”

There was a pause; Tony could almost hear the cogs of the HYDRA leader’s brain working.  Supervillains were _so_ predictable.

“This is a good deal for you,” Tony continued.  “I came all this way, can we at least get a face to face negotiation?  Or face to mask, if you’ve got the secret identity thing going, I don’t judge, I’ve been there.”

A door off to the side of the hangar opened and expelled several more HYDRA guards, followed by - Tony’s stomach flipped over - Steve.  His hands were cuffed behind his back, and two HYDRA punks had M4s jammed into his side.  Steve’s face was bruised and there was dried blood on his temple but he was alive, and Tony allowed himself half a second to acknowledge his overwhelming relief before taking in the fact that Steve also looked _furious_.  That was okay, that was _more_  than okay, Steve could hate him forever as far as he cared, so long as he got out of here.  

“You sure you want to bother trading your life for this guy?” the voice from earlier said, and Tony tore his eyes away from Steve’s face to see a heavily scarred man dressed all in black armor stroll through the door, accompanied by the Winter Soldier.  “I’ve taken him down him twice already.  I don’t think he’s all he’s cracked up to be.”   

“Sorry, what were you saying?” Tony said.  “I was distracted by your whole - face - thing.”

“He’s weak.  The Winter Soldier took him easily yesterday; he barely put up a fight.  I thought it was a mistake to let him live, before S.H.I.E.L.D. fell,” the scarred man continued.  “Turns out I was wrong.  It’s going to be so much more satisfying to kill you in front of him first.”

“Uh huh,” Tony said.  “Look, no offense, but I’ve heard all the Bond villain threats before, so why don’t we skip ahead to the part where you tell me about why you’ve got it in for me?”

The man smiled, his scars stretching across his face.  “I was just waiting for you to ask, Stark.  My name is Brock Rumlow, but you can call me Crossbones.”

“I’ve never even heard of you, and I’m definitely not going to call you that.”

The man’s smile didn’t falter.  “Cap here knows me.  We were buddies back at S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Tony said.  “Cap doesn’t usually hang out with traitors.”

“He does when he’s too stupid to see what’s going on right under his nose,” Rumlow snapped.  “After we took down S.H.I.E.L.D., I joined my brothers in arms here.  In all those months of raids, you and your Avengers never found us.”

“Hate to break it to you,” Tony said, “but we wouldn’t have bothered to come for you if we’d known you were here.  You’ve got what, like, a hundred guys?  A tricked out jeep, a couple rocket launchers?  Not exactly up to Red Skull’s standard.”

“And yet we’ve also got you and Rogers,” Rumlow said.  “Funny how that worked out.  Where are the rest of your precious Avengers now, Stark?”

Tony didn’t reply; he glanced at Steve, who was staring straight at him with narrowed eyes.  Steve would never forgive him for this, but damn if it wasn’t worth it.

“They’re not here,” Tony said.  “Clearly.”

Rumlow’s grin widened.  “He was right.  He _did_  tear you apart.”

“Excuse me?” Tony said, thrown for a loop.  “He who?”

“Ultron,” Rumlow said.

Tony felt the ground shift under his feet.  “What do you know about Ultron?”

“Before you and your team killed him, he contacted me,” Rumlow said.  “He was everywhere and everything, and he knew who I was and what Rogers had done to me.  What Rogers had made me into.  Ultron knew he was going to die, but he had a plan.”

“His plans didn’t really work out,” Tony said flatly.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Rumlow said.  “Ultron didn’t just want you dead, Stark.  That wasn’t anywhere near enough for him, in those last seconds.  He wanted so much more.  He wanted you to lose _everything_  - your company, your friends, the respect of everyone you’d ever known.  He wanted you stripped of everything you had, everything you’d ever been. Just like you did to him.”

Tony swallowed down the bile in his throat.  “What are you saying?”

“What I’m saying is that you were just the first step,” Rumlow said, taking a step forward.  “Cap here was good enough to hand over your records on Ultron to the government - not that it mattered, since we were about to do it ourselves - and from there it wasn’t much of a stretch to get your case turned over to the World Security Council.  All the dominoes fell into place.  We had you just where Ultron wanted you: your name political poison, your last moments spent in a living hell, and then a quick, anonymous execution.  Just like he suffered.”  Here Rumlow’s smile finally fell.  “But then Cap here got in the way.”

“He does that,” Tony said.

Rumlow narrowed his eyes.  “It worked out in the end, though, didn’t it?  When the Soldier here showed up with him instead of you, I took what I could get.  Turns out all I had to do was wait.  If you really think I’m going to trade him for you, you’re insane.  I don’t care about your armor, Stark.  I’ve got Cap’s blood now - soon, I’ll be just as strong as he is.”

“Well, that’s HYDRA bingo for me,” Tony said.  

“It’s actually pretty touching, Stark,” Rumlow said.  “Stupid, but touching.  I mean, you came here alone?  Just to try to save him?”

“No, I didn’t,” Tony said, and Steve’s eyes widened fractionally.

“You don’t intend to save him?” Rumlow said, raising his eyebrows.

“No,” Tony said.  “I didn’t come alone.”

The arrow flew out of no where and hit Rumlow right between the eyes.

There was a full three seconds of total silence as everyone in the room watched Rumlow slump forward.

From the corner, Clint said, “Man, that supervillain shit gets boring,” and shimmered into existence.

And then everything kind of happened all at once.

The two guys with their guns trained on Steve swung toward Clint.  From the other corner, Natasha made her existence known when she dispatched both of them immediately.  She was invisible one moment and then the next she wasn’t, sprinting across the floor and kicking one agent in the face and taking out another with a shock from her Bites.  

From inside the room to the side of the cavern, an alarm started to wail; Tony calculated that, as long as Vision and Wanda had made it to the control room after they’d peeled off from the rest of the team on the first floor, they had about sixty seconds until the rest of the compound knew what was happening and showed up.

Tony took out a rocket launcher and shot back into the air to track down Steve, who’d rolled out of the way when the bullets started flying.  As he landed next to him, Barnes swung around and grabbed Steve’s arms, hauling him to his feet.

“Hold still, moron,” Barnes muttered, grabbing the thick steel cuffs around Steve’s wrists.  He braced himself on Steve’s shoulder and twisted, hard, and the steel crumpled under his hands.

“You gotta let me take a look at that thing one of those days,” Tony said, reaching back and wrapping his hand around the smooth surface clipped to his back.  “Cap, catch!”  

Steve spun around and grabbed - nothing.  

“This comes off, right?” he said as he looked right through his shield, rendered invisible by a nanotech version of the Quinjet’s shielding technology, the same tech that had kept the rest of the team invisible as they followed Tony into the base.  

“Soap and water,” Tony assured him, blasting a HYDRA agent away with a repulsor while Steve cracked another in the back of  the head with his shield and Barnes punched a third in the face with his metal arm.  “Friday, get me back on the comms.  Avengers, status?”

“Surveillance throughout the compound has been neutralized,” Wanda said.  

“Air support is in place,” Rhodey said.  

“We’ve already taken down one helicopter,” Sam added.  “I’m guessing there’s more where that came from.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. Rogue is go,” Coulson said in Tony’s ear.  “Extraction team will be touching down in six minutes.”

Tony grinned as Steve threw his shield toward two guards, hitting them both in quick succession.  “S.H.I.E.L.D. Rogue, I like that.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Coulson said.  “You’re lucky we’re here at all.  I heard Lola got shot.”

“What’s that, Agent?  Sorry, you’re cutting out,” Tony said.

“You’re right,” Steve said, grunting as he pulled his shield out of where it had lodged itself in the wall.  “It is _really_  annoying to not be able to hear what’s going on.”

“Almost forgot,” Tony said, popping open a compartment on his arm and tossing Steve a miniature earpiece.  “To help you get out in case things went belly up back there.”

“On that topic, we’ll be discussing some new rules about using yourself as a pawn in hostage negotiations,” Steve said as Natasha and Clint jogged up and Barnes pulled off his mask and flung it away.  “Who do we have on comms?”

“Everybody,” Natasha said.

“We’re getting the band back together,” Clint said, shooting a guard approaching from the hallway without looking at him.

“We need to get out of here,” Steve said.  

“Barton, see if we’ve got a clear path through the stairwell,” Tony said.  “Nat, extract the data from Rumlow’s systems - specifically what he was doing with Steve’s blood, and who he shared it with.”

“And who he’s in contact with at the WSC,” Steve added.  “Somebody’s orchestrating the case against Tony, and I want to know who.”

“I’ve already cased his back room,” Natasha said.  “If you can buy me a few minutes, I’m golden.”

“Got it,” Steve said.  “Buck?”

“Yeah, I’m with you,” Barnes said.  He lifted a gun and caught a HYDRA agent in the chest.  “Pretty sure my cover’s blown.”

Steve clapped him on the shoulder.  “Sorry about that, pal.  Okay, Clint and Bucky, find us a way out of here.  Nat, Tony and I have you covered.”  

“Heads up,” Tony said, firing his lasers as several HYDRA guards sped toward them in a Jeep equipped with submachine gun.  “Oh come on, you guys cannot think this is a good idea - yeah, like I said,” he called as he hit it with a rocket and the Jeep’s engine exploded in its driver’s face.  “Terrible idea.  Friday, speakers only.  Hey, Cap, you got a second to talk?”

“Sure,” Steve said, snagging his shield out of the air and spinning around until he was back to back with Tony.  “Now’s as good a time as any.”

Tony dropped into the kind of fighting stance he only took up when he knew he didn’t have to worry about what was behind him.  “So look, before, I was a dick.”

“Tony - ”

“No, hey, I’m breaking you out this time so I get to talk first.  You’re only gonna hear me say this once so you better enjoy it.  I was a dick because I was scared, and I was pissed.  And that doesn’t make it okay, and I’m not gonna say that if we make it out of this I’ll be less of a dick, because the truth is that I’m not.  I’m gonna keep being a dick most of the time because that’s who I am, but I will say that I’ll do my best to not be _such_  a dick, because you don’t deserve that, even if you’re also kind of a dick sometimes.  And now that I’ve warned you upfront about what a dick I am - ”

“I already knew you were a dick,” Steve interrupted, slamming his shield into the back of some moron’s head.

“ - I’m gonna ignore that because you’ve been under a lot of stress recently, I was thinking that if we get out of this, maybe I could buy you a drink sometime.”

Steve roundhouse kicked the gun right out of a HYDRA goon’s hands, then punched him in the face.  “You’re asking me out.  Right now.”

“Like I said,” Tony said, blasting another agent away and spinning around to face Steve.  “Total dick.”

Steve grinned.  “No, actually, it kinda works for me.”

There was a roar over the comms.  Apparently, it was Time To Smash.

“So, I was hoping to kiss you just now, but that’s a Code Green,” Tony said.  “And Code Green means - ”

“Code Green means we’d better move,”  Steve said.  He pressed a hand to his ear.  “Hawkeye, how’s that exit route looking?”

“We’re working on clearing the northeast staircase,” Clint said.  There was a thump and then a strangled scream.  “Yeah, it’s pretty much clear.  Nat, you set?”

“Just about,” Natasha said.  “The first tech I found was uncooperative.  Luckily, his friend decided to talk.”

“Funny how that works,” Coulson said.  “Extraction team landing in two minutes.”

“Iron Man, behind you,” Steve called, and Tony moved on instinct, firing his repulsor at Steve’s shield and watching as he deflected it directly into an incoming agent.

Steve grinned.  “That’s cool every time.”

Natasha sprinted out from the side room, firing blindly at an agent running after her.  “Let’s move,” she snapped, not even slowing down as she ran by Steve.  Steve took off after her and Tony covered them as they headed for the exit. 

They met Clint and Bucky in the staircase, which was littered with bodies.  

“Just to clarify, I’m winning,” Clint said, pulling an arrow out of some guy’s chest as Tony landed next to him.

“It’s not a competition,” Barnes snapped from halfway up the staircase.  “But if it was, I would _definitely_  be winning.”

“Focus, boys,” Natasha said, overtaking Barnes on her way up the stairs.  “You can finish your dick measuring contest once we’re out of here in one piece.”

“Did somebody say dick measuring contest?” Tony said.  “I’m in.”

“Is that really wise?” Steve said.

“Again, way too much information,” Barnes added.

“Just for that, nobody gets a ride out of here,” Tony said, banking around the corner on the first level and clearing a row of HYDRA guards with a laser beam.  “You’re all walking home.”

“I feel like I’m missing something,” Rhodey said.

Clint reached the top of the stairs next and waved for the rest of the team to follow.  “Just America’s new power couple.”

“It would be really easy to leave you behind, Barton,” Tony said, taking up the rear again as Natasha, Clint, and Barnes ran forward.

“As sweet as all this is, we have chatter on HYDRA comm lines, and it doesn’t sound good,” Coulson said.  “They’re talking about self-destruct sequences, and we’re getting heat signatures from explosives starting at the third subterranean level.  You need to move.”

Tony turned to Steve.  “Want a ride, Stars and Stripes?”

Steve smirked and stepped forward, reaching for the handholds on Tony’s shoulders.  “I thought you said nobody gets a  - ”

The explosion blasted Tony into the air, and he slammed into the ceiling before bringing most of it with him as he crashed to the floor.

“Oh, fuck,” he gasped.  “Yeah, that’s gonna hurt tomorrow.”  He tried to push the rock and plaster off of him, but the suit barely shifted.  “Cap?  You okay?  Friday, more power to thrusters.”

“Hydraulic systems have been knocked out, sir,” Friday said.

“Yeah, I gathered,” Tony wheezed, trying not to think about exactly how many tons of crumbled sheet rock were currently between him and freedom.  

“Cap, Iron Man, status?” Coulson said.

Steve groaned.  “I’m fine.  Tony and I are stuck behind a couple boulders.  We could use some help digging out.”

“Everybody else is clear,” Natasha said, her voice crackling over the comms.  “Barnes and War Machine are on their way back in to clear you.”

Tony shifted again, but the hydraulics that made up the suit’s superstrength remained stubbornly offline.  The suit wasn’t going anywhere.  “Structural integrity intact, Friday?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Emergency release, then,” Tony said.  “It’s fine, I’ll walk.”  He held his breath as the clasps on each of the suit’s joints released at once - that was the part where the debris on top of him _maybe_  crushed him to death before he got out of the way - and wriggled out of the suit and out from under the collapsed ceiling.  “Steve?”

“Over here,” Steve called from further up the corridor, where he was shifting rocks away from the exit, covered in dust and sweat, his shield resting against the brand new wall separating them from their escape route.  “You’re not going to be much help getting us out of here without your suit.”

“Can I use your shield as a shovel?” Tony asked.

Steve rolled his eyes, and Tony wanted to kiss him right there, right in the middle of a crumbling HYDRA base, and Steve must have been able to see it on Tony’s face because a smile snuck up on him before he could stop it - and then his mouth fell open.  Tony whirled around - a lone HYDRA agent had emerged from the debris-strewn staircase and was aiming a gun in Steve’s direction.  

Tony didn’t even think.  He dove forward and shoved Steve out of the way, and later he’d remember that the first thing he felt was the gravel scraping his palms.  

The second thing he felt was the cold burn of the bullet in his back.

There was a crunch as Steve’s shield went flying into the agent’s face, and then Steve dropped to his knees next to Tony and - oh, Tony was on the ground, when had that happened - 

“Tony,” Steve said, his face swimming between Tony and the ceiling, and Tony wanted to kiss that look off his face.  “Look at me.  Guys, I need a med evac _now_.  Tony, can you hear me?  Tony - ”

“Hey,” Tony said.  “About that drink - ”

And then everything went black.

-

Someone was holding Tony’s hand.

He was wrapped in cotton, numb and floating and a little bit cold, and everything was fuzzy, and the only thing tethering him to consciousness, if you could call it that, was that somebody was holding his hand.  

The world went dark for a long second and then light again - oh, he _blinked_  - and the soft, steady beep of a heart monitor started up, and everything was still fuzzy but Steve was there, staring at him, his eyes tired and rimmed with red.

“Your face looks sad,” Tony said, which led to a second conclusion.  “I’m on the good drugs.”

Steve smiled, just a little.  “Yup.”  

“Awesome,” Tony said.  Someone was still holding his hand; he didn’t usually go in for hand holding, but he had to admit it felt kind of nice, the way their thumb was running over his knuckles.  “Everybody else make it out okay?” 

“Yeah.  You were the only one stupid enough to throw yourself in front of a bullet,” Steve said.

“Heroic enough, you mean.”  

“Whatever you say,” Steve said.  “Just don’t do it again.”

“No promises,” Tony said.  “I told you I was a dick.”

Steve smiled for real this time.  “You may have mentioned it.”

“Just as long as you know,” Tony said.  

Somebody lifted his hand off the bed and brushed their lips against his fingers, so softly that Tony was pretty sure it was just one of those morphine things.  He smiled anyway; the bed felt like marshmallows.  It had been a long time since he’d slept in a bed made of marshmallows.

“Why did you _ever_ sleep in a bed made of marshmallows?” Steve asked, which was a weird question.  

“I’m gonna pass out again now,” Tony said, and did.

-

The next time Tony woke up, everything hurt.

“Ugh,” he groaned, covering his eyes with his hand to block out the light.  “Why did they take away the drugs?  The drugs were so nice.”

“It’s been three days,” Natasha said.  “Don’t be a baby.”

Tony dropped his hand to glare at her.  “You’re so mean.  I got _shot_.”

“Just once,” Natasha said.

“It takes like six bullet wounds for her to feel any sympathy for you,” Clint said from Tony’s other side.  “I know from experience.”

“If you’re in a lot of pain, I can up your dose,” Bruce said from the foot of the bed.  “But we thought you might want to be awake for this.”

“For what?” Tony said.

“Your boyfriend’s gonna be on TV,” Clint said.

“He’s not my - wait, what?” Tony said.  “What’s he doing on TV?”

Natasha picked up the remote and turned on the television.  “Press conference.  Tony Stark’s been captured.”

“I have?” Tony said.  He looked around the hospital room, which was exactly the same as every hospital room he’d ever been in.  “Where are we?”

“New York,” Clint said.  “We had to take you to a hospital in Stuttgart, because you kept almost dying.”

“Once we stabilized you, they wanted to take you to the medical center on the Raft,” Bruce said.  “Steve had… some thoughts on that.”

“Loud thoughts,” Natasha elaborated.  

“He said the president was being an asshole,” Clint said.  “It was awesome.”

“It was mildly frightening,” Bruce amended.  “At any rate, there are a couple of federal agents stationed outside your room and Captain America is no longer welcome at the White House.”

“It’s starting,” Clint said, grabbing the remote and turning it up.

Onscreen, Steve was approaching a platform covered in mics from, as far as Tony could tell, every news station in the continental US.  He was in full uniform, his shield slung across his back.

“He looks like shit,” Tony said.

“That’s because he hasn’t left your side in 72 hours,” Natasha said.

“What?   _Why?_ ”

Natasha, Clint and Bruce exchanged eye rolls.  “You’re a moron,” Clint said.  

“Hey, Birdbrain, I just invented an invisibility suit for you, you can go to - ”

“Shut up, he’s talking,” Natasha snapped.

“ - thank you for coming today,” Steve was saying into the microphones.  “As you’ve heard, Tony Stark has returned to the United States.  He’s currently recovering from an injury that almost ended his life.

“Last week, I personally led several members of the team known as the Avengers in removing Mr. Stark from the Raft.  I take full responsibility for aiding in the escape of a prisoner, and I plan to turn myself into the federal government.”

“ _What_?”  Tony sat up so fast that he almost dislodged an IV; Natasha had clearly been anticipating this, and forced him back down into bed.

“Relax,” Clint said.  “They’re not gonna throw him in jail.  Probably.”

Natasha glared at Clint.  “It’s a formality.  The public is already mostly back on your side; we determined this was the best way to guarantee it.”

Steve raised his eyebrows calmly, and the reporters quieted down.  

“As you know, Mr. Stark was in prison for his role in the creation of the artificial intelligence Ultron, who was responsible for the attack in Sokovia last May.  What you may not know is that he was being held on the Raft without trial and in violation of his Constitutional rights.  Members of our team received information that there was a plan in place to execute Mr. Stark last week, and we made the decision to remove him from the system until he was guaranteed a fair and just trial, as is his right as an American citizen.”

“Okay, I’m starting to understand your Captain America kink,” Clint said.

“I _do_  not have a - ”

“Furthermore,” Steve continued, “we uncovered evidence that the plot to murder Mr. Stark was the work of the terrorist group HYDRA.  HYDRA continued to track Mr. Stark after he left the Raft, and he was fighting to protect the lives of his teammates when HYDRA made their final attempt on his life.  And they very nearly succeeded.”

Steve took a deep breath and leveled an unwavering stare at the camera, and Tony’s hands ached.  

“Tony Stark has made a lot of mistakes,” he said.

Clint snorted.  “Understatement.”

“Shh,” Natasha said, and Tony continued to avoid looking at any of them.

“However, I can assure you that everything Tony Stark does, he does because he wants to protect people.  He’s saved more lives than I can count.  He’s a hero.  And even heroes make mistakes.  I fully support the due process of law, and if a jury of his peers decides to convict him of a crime because of his involvement in the events in Sokovia, they will be justified in doing so.  But if anyone tries to get around the law to get to Tony Stark, they’ll have to get through the rest of the Avengers first.  

“And with that, I will now surrender myself to the authorities.  Thank you for your time, and God bless America,” Steve said.

The press exploded, but Steve walked off the platform and climbed into a waiting SUV without another word.  

Clint turned off the TV.  “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Tony said quietly, swallowing hard.

“Anybody else think Cap’s totally wasted on the superhero thing?” Clint said.  “I think he just convinced me you’re not an asshole.  He should go into politics.  After he gets out of prison, I mean.”

“He’ll be fine,” Bruce said before Tony could open his mouth.  “Nobody wants to end their career by bringing charges against Captain America.”

“And if somebody decides they do,” Natasha said, smirking, “we’ll just have to break him out.”

-

_Six Months Later_

“Stark?”

Tony looked up from the edge of his cot, his hands clenched tight in the sheets.  He’d been up all night, but he felt wired, like he’d had three cappuccinos instead of half a paper cup of shitty prison coffee.   

“You’re up,” the warden said, sliding his ID card along the panel next to Tony’s cell.  “Ready to get out of here?”

“Nah, I thought I’d stay through the weekend,” Tony said.  “That okay with you?”  

“Very funny,” the warden said dryly.  Tony stood up and walked out of his cell without a second glance.  He wouldn’t miss it; high-security federal prison was a hell of a lot nicer than the Raft, sure, but it was still prison.  

He followed the warden down the hall and waited while they processed his paperwork, took his fingerprints, handed over his clothes, searched him twice - what was he going to smuggle _out_  of prison, seriously, orange was _not_  his color - and then marched him into a holding cell to await 12 p.m.  Tony tapped his hand on the chair and tried not to stare at the clock.  He knew what was waiting for him outside - despite his lawyer’s best attempts, his release date had been leaked to the press.  Tony wasn’t Public Enemy #1 anymore - Cap had seen to that with his little press conference - but he still had a lot of trust to rebuild.  

“It’s time,” the warden said.  Tony held out his hands, and the warden unlocked his handcuffs and led him out of the holding cell and down the hall.  Tony ran a hand through his hair and then stroked his beard; it wasn’t perfect, but hey, safety razors only did so much.  As soon as he got home, he was going to take the longest shower _ever_  - 

“That’s the employee exit,” Tony said blankly as the warden opened a door off to the side of the release center.  “What happened to no special treatment, time to face your adoring public - ”

“Things change,” the warden said with a shrug.  “You wanna keep arguing, or you wanna get out of here?”

“The second one,” Tony said, following him through the door.  The warden unlocked two more doors and then - and then the sun streamed in, and the door was open, and Tony stepped out into the bright light.  He blinked, wishing he’d had Pepper send a pair of sunglasses along with the Armani suit.

“Good luck,” the warden said, shutting the door behind him, and Tony took a deep breath.  

The parking lot was empty.  Happy was around at the main entrance, along with all of the reporters and gawkers and people who still believed he should be in jail, waiting for him to walk out, but he was here, all alone - 

-or almost all alone. 

A few cars down, there was a man in a leather jacket leaning against a cherry red convertible, his arms crossed over his chest, a ball cap pulled low over his eyes. 

“Need a ride?” Steve said as he approached.  

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Tony said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.  “You responsible for this?”

Steve shrugged.  “I called in a few favors.  Being Captain America has some perks.”

“Using your celebrity to help me evade paparazzi,” Tony said.  “Will wonders never cease.  So, don’t tell me this is Lola.”

“Are you kidding?” Steve said, pushing off from the convertible.  “You think Coulson would lend me Lola to pick you up from prison?  Keep dreaming, Stark.”

“Oh, I will,” Tony said, and stepped forward, half hungry, half hesitant, but Steve didn’t let him waver too long.  He met him halfway, wrapping a hand around the back of Tony’s neck and pulling him in for a long, slow kiss.   

“I bought this one, actually,” Steve said, exhaling against his lips.  “Thought maybe you could figure out how to make it fly.”

Tony pushed him up against the driver’s side door.  “I can probably make that happen.  I am a genius, after all.”

Steve grinned.  “Really?  Don’t think you’ve ever mentioned that before.”  

Tony twisted his hands in Steve’s shirt and kissed him again, trying to say so many things, and Steve kissed him back like he heard all of them.  “Let’s get out of here.”

“Copy that,” Steve said.  “I think I remember something about you owing me a drink?”

“I think you’re right,” Tony said.  “I know a place.  Big ugly building with an A on it, you ever heard of it?”

“I’m sure we’ll find it,” Steve said.  “I’ll drive.”

_fin_


End file.
